Police know the massive sobriety checkpoint officers staged Friday night on Rockville Pike probably wasn’t the most effective way to catch drunk drivers.
But catching those who drive under the influence wasn’t the main objective. Stacy Flynn, a sergeant with the county’s alcohol enforcement unit, said sobriety checkpoints have been proven to work as a deterrence.
On Friday night, as officers blocked two lanes of northbound Rockville Pike near Cedar Lane, Flynn said she hoped drivers were tweeting, texting and posting Facebook messages warning their friends who might not yet have left the bar.
“We’re really hoping in the back of their mind, people will see this and think, ‘Don’t drive drunk in Montgomery County,'” Flynn said.
About 30 officers set up on Rockville Pike at the north entrance to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center campus. At 11 p.m., cops shut down the road to one lane.
Eight vehicles at a time, police stopped drivers in the one open lane. Officers asked “How much have you had to drink tonight?”
Drivers who answered that they had consumed alcohol were pulled out of the line and onto the entrance driveway of the Military Medical Center. Flynn said that and any obvious signs of intoxication count as probable cause.
In two hours, officers stopped hundreds of vehicles and pulled a few dozen from the line. Those drivers who were pulled then were asked to take a series of field sobriety tests, including the horizontal gaze nystagmus (when cops ask a driver to follow a finger with his or her eyes), divided attention test (walking a straight line heel-to-heel) and a one-leg stand test.
Some drivers were then asked if they would take a field breathalyzer test, the results of which are inadmissible in court but which officers sometimes use to determine if a driver should be charged for a DUI.
Of the hundreds of drivers to pass through the checkpoint, none were arrested for DUI on the spot. Flynn said roving officers part of the detail and in the Bethesda area did make two DUI arrests in the course of regular traffic stops. Officers also made two drug arrests as part of the checkpoint.
“The majority of people we test pass the tests just fine,” Flynn said. “We’re trying not to cause a major inconvenience. We don’t want people tweeting about the traffic jam we caused.”
That aspect of the sobriety checkpoint requires a carefully choreographed routine. At a briefing before the checkpoint, Flynn advised officers to keep their interactions with drivers short and to the point.
Once drivers got to the eight-vehicle checkpoint, the vast majority were on their way in less than 30 seconds. When an officer pulled a possible drunk driver, a back-up officer stepped in to take his or her place in the line.
Of the 30 officers, 10 were paid for through a state grant, some came from other areas of the county as part of their alcohol recertification training and a handful were on their regular 2nd District shifts.
Flynn said county police hope to do eight more checkpoints throughout the county this year. The evening was a relatively drama-free exercise. For traffic safety, cops are required to put up signs announcing the checkpoint well ahead of where the actual checkpoint takes place.
At midnight, officers observed a driver waiting to get through the checkpoint get out of her car and switch places with a passenger. Flynn and officers said that was almost a sure sign of drunk driving, only to find the woman blew a 0.0 on her field sobriety test.
She told officers she switched from the driver’s seat to the backseat because she wanted to search the internet on her phone. She and her passengers then left the checkpoint with no charges.
At about 1 a.m., officers ended the checkpoint and opened the road.
