DANVILLE -- A Contra Costa County sheriff's deputy told two colleagues he was making "dirty DUI" arrests on behalf of a private investigator who was setting up men to damage their reputations in legal fights, an investigator said in court documents.

Deputy Stephen Tanabe, 47, told a reserve sheriff's deputy on patrol with him the night of Jan. 14 that a drunken-driving arrest the two were making outside a Danville bar was a "setup" and that the target needed to be "dirtied" for a future court date, a sheriff's investigator wrote in a search warrant affidavit.

Tanabe was working with a private investigator who had been hired by the target's wife for $5,000, the affidavit said. The deputy is suspected of receiving "financial benefits" for the arrest, the document said.

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Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas – A new legislative proposal would allow first-time drunken drivers in Texas to be acquitted if they complete supervision and treatment, a move supporters say would reduce court backlogs and shift the judicial system's focus to punishing repeat DWI offenders.

Rep. Todd Smith, R-Euless, filed the proposal that would allow for deferred adjudication for first-time DWI offenders. Repetition of the offense would become grounds to increase future punishments.

The bill, which has supporters including Mothers Against Drunk Driving, prosecutors and defense attorneys, would be a change from the state's stance that all drunken drivers should face fines and jail. In the mid-1980s, deferred adjudication for such offenses was abolished in the state. Opponents at the time, including MADD, had argued that the form of probation was being accepted for repeat offenders.

"It's a needed change," said Richard Alpert, a Tarrant County prosecutor. "It's not like they are getting a free DWI, but a type of probation that would not technically be a conviction. If they don't reoffend, they can say they have not been convicted. But if they do reoffend, it can be used to enhance their punishment."

Supporters say that by routing cases out of courtrooms, the plan could ease court backlogs. Also, they say, it could improve efforts to track and punish repeat DWI offenders and remove the threat of jail that makes some first-timers refuse guilty pleas.

"Generally we do not support deferred adjudication bills, but we are going to support this one," Bill Lewis, public policy liaison for the Irving-based nonprofit group MADD, told the Austin American-Statesman. "Right now, we are hearing that many cases are not getting prosecuted for DWI but for a bogus charge. We hope the practice of reducing charges will be reduced if this bill does indeed pass."

Supporters of the bill also say it could give prosecutors a new negotiating tool.

Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley said that the plan would still require supervision of the defendant and could enforce fines and allow a judge to impose jail time as a condition of probation.

"This would be a first step to putting some sanity in that system as long as people make sure to retain it only for the true first-time offender," Bradley said.

While the proposal has been in front of the Legislature before, Alpert said there is plenty of support this time.

"I think there is some momentum for this," Alpert said. "It would give people who want to take responsibility an incentive to plead guilty, as opposed to setting these cases for trial. We have too many cases on the docket."
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Information from: Austin American-Statesman, http://www.statesman.com

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http://www.duiblog.com/2009/07/

Is MADD about drunk drivers, or is it a guise to eliminate alcohol use completely?

"MADD's original goal was an enormously important one -- to reduce drunk driving and the deaths and injuries that it causes. However, as its founder Candy Lightner observed, the group has become neo-prohibitionist. As a former MADD chapter president explains, it's "a big corporation" and "all about money." Unfortunately, what began as a dedicated volunteer group of caring women has become a largely indifferent self-serving bureaucracy."

Read more of this article:  Here

http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/Drivingissues/1133276608.html

Posted By Zack Stovall On March 2, 2009 @ 3:05 pm In Arkansas News Bureau, Legislature, News | No Comments

No one denies that some drinkers of adult libations habitually over consume, with tragic consequences for themselves, their families, and innocents unfortunate enough to cross their weaving path on the highway.

Drinking alcohol is not, as the New Prohibitionists assert, all bad. It is hard to name a freedom that carries no risk, or a product that human irresponsibility has not at some point turned into a weapon. Perspective is what balances the equation.

MADD and its allies oppose any “drinking and driving.” That certainly is their right. Yet the traditional role of alcohol as a social lubricant and host to conviviality cannot be denied. “The sun looks down on nothing half so good,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer.” Today, tens of millions of Americans value those same experiences. They find camaraderie, cement friendship, and reaffirm love in restaurants where alcohol helps confirm these vital human ceremonies. Many must use a car to get there, and to return home. How great is the risk?

For the vast majority of these citizens—the responsible majority, who know when to stop—the risk is small. To eliminate it totally removes these people’s right to publicly celebrate the most fundamental human connections. The risk that such celebrations create is no more inordinate than that created when we allow drivers to go 65 mph on an interstate, knowing full well that a 25 mph cap would be safer. In a free society, the question is one of balancing competing goods.

The Prohibitionist—the Absolutist—impulse is always with us. Once its spokesmen alleged that drinkers might explode if they stood too close to an open flame. Today they charge that drinkers, however prudent and careful in consumption, are wreaking slaughter on other motorists and pedestrians. Folly then, folly now.

What’s needed is a new alliance of reason— a league of hard-headed realists that would preserve revered social rituals by tempering the New Temperance, yet champion safety by relentlessly targeting the reckless few.

To fight with each other while this menace barrels past, claiming new victims, is to exacerbate the problem. It is not to behave with sobriety."

http://www.ridl.us/research/ABL_ACovertWarAgainstDrinking.pdf

About one year after the vice president of the United States was allegedly arrested after a DUI crash with his mistress, American Prohibition was reborn with a White House directive to make "drinking and driving recognized as socially unacceptable," to increase the "number and quality of arrests" and to "build a community consensus behind effective countermeasure programs."

On April 14th, 1982, President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order Number 12358, establishing "The Presidential Commission on Drunk Driving." (The professional actor kept a straight face for the American T.V. audiences--a true test of his persuasive powers.) This Republican Party Renaissance Man gave his Commission the power to "attack," "combat" and "eliminate" American citizens who dared to commit the "crimes" of purchasing alcohol beverages and owning motor vehicles. On lucky December 13th, 1982, "An Interim Report to the Nation from the President's Commission on Drunk Driving" was released to America. In it was published the government's blueprint for Secret Prohibition.