Same time works fine

Last Thursday, Capt. Joy Citta and I tag-teamed a day-long meeting called by the Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles. She handled the morning, I took the afternoon. The meeting was a forum to discuss how to improve Nebraska’s Administrative License Revocation (ALR) process. A group of about a hundred prosecutors and police officers had been invited to to provide input.

ALR revokes the driver’s license of a person arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. Research has supposedly shown that ALR has a measurable impact on reducing drunk driving. Apparently it is the immediacy of the loss of driving privilege that causes the effect.

Courts have ruled that administrative revocation requires that the driver be provided with an opportunity to challenge the revocation and in Nebraska, the police officer who made the stop and/or administered any test is summoned to a hearing whenever the revocation is challenged. ALR hearings are a major pain in the neck for our police officers. First, it is yet another hearing on the same case you are going to court for—and drunk driving cases typically involve more than one court appearance. Second, unlike court, when you appear at the hearing there is no attorney there to represent you. Defense attorneys can badger officers in ways they would never get away with in a court room.

Finally, ALR hearings are a significant impostion on the personal lives of police officers. Think about it: the officers who arrest drunk drivers, especially lots of drunk drivers, all work on the graveyard shift. They are being constantly called to court and to ALR hearings during that are effectively in the middle of their night. You get overtime pay when you are required to appear at an ALR hearing. That has cost us $47,262 so far this fiscal year. Court appearances and ALR hearings may add a little extra on your paycheck but it hardly offsets the disruption to your sleep, health, and family life.

When the time came to brainstorm improvements, there was a lot of discussion. I had some suggestions. A couple of them caused laughter, but I was not joking at all, and was quite serious in making these proposals. First, I think the State should pay the overtime cost. Second, I think that instead of impounding your driver’s license, we should change the law to allow the officer to impound both your car and your driver’s license. You can have it back as soon as the hearing has been held and any period of revocation expires.

Third (and my favorite), I think that ALR hearings should be scheduled on exactly the same day of the week and at exactly the same time as the arrest was made. If you get yourself arrested for drunk driving on Saturday morning at 1:23 A.M., the ALR hearing should be on a Saturday morning at 1:23 A.M..

Bet that would reduce the number of hearings quite a bit. Somehow I think fewer people would contest the ALR. And if a hearing actaully was held, it would be during the arresting officer’s normal work time—not in the middle of his or her sleep time.