FRIDAY, SEPT. 21, 2001
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN - 5A
Drinking and driving: state, city crackdown
Kansas stiffens penalties for OUI offenders
City says making money was not the reason fines were increased
By Ryan Malashock Kansan staff writer
Anyone caught driving drunk will face stiffer penalties in Kansas this year than in years past.
The penalty for operating under the influence was raised July 1 by the Legislature.
"The changes were made in hopes of deterring drinking and driving in the state," said City of Lawrence prosecutor Jerry Little.
Before July 1, the sentence for a first-offense OUI, which is the same offense as the more commonly known DUI, was a minimum $200 fine and two days in jail. Now a first-offense OUI will cost a minimum of $500 with the same jail time. For each additional offense, the monetary fines will be greater than last year.
Also, OUIs will now permanently stay on a driver's record. In the past, OUIs were erased after five years.
"The money collected from OUIs goes into a general city fund," Little said. "The intention is not to make more money."
Little said that while the city would make more money from the raised fines, the decision was not made for financial reasons.
It's too early to know whether the new penalties will make people think twice about drinking and driving. Little said.
"It's really too soon to tell if the changes are cutting down OUIs," Little said. "We're just starting to see in court the offenders from July. The court is keeping track of statistics."
The Lawrence Police Department will conduct two sobriety checkpoints tonight at 22nd and Iowa Streets and in the 300 block of County Road 1055.
Rachel Riekes, Omaha, Neb., junior, said the increased OUI fines would not affect her thinking about drinking and driving.
Police checkpoints to nab drunken drivers tonight
"Raising the prices doesn't make me more cautious," Riekes said. "It doesn't matter if the fine is $200 or $500, either way you shouldn't be driving drunk. But hopefully it will make other people nervous."
KANSAN FILE PHOTO
Police officers patrol a local intersection and wait to arrest drunken drivers. Checkpoints are planned for tonight at 22nd and Iowa streets and in the 300 block of County Road 1055.
Contact Malashock at 864-4810
Officials say field tests usually result in a few arrests at each location
By Courtney Craigmile Kansan staff writer
Tonight is the night to call Saferide if you have to drive down Iowa Street. The Lawrence Police Department is conducting a sobriety checkpoint from 11:30 tonight to 1:30 a.m. tomorrow at 22nd and Iowa streets.
Sgt. Kirk Fultz of the Lawrence Police Department said this was the sixth sobriety checkpoint the department had conducted this year.
Fultz said the intersections were selected because a Douglas County Municipal Court study found a high occurrence of alcohol-related accidents in these areas.
"A lot of it depends on where we have crashes in the city," he said. "We don't want to stop people from drinking alcohol. We just don't want them to get behind the wheel."
Previous checkpoints were at 23rd and Massachusetts streets, Second and North streets, in the 600 and 1200 blocks of Tennessee Street and in the 1200 block of Massachusetts Street.
Fultz said Police Chief Ron Olin and City Manager Mike Wildgen expressed interest in having sobriety checkpoints in town last year because of the number of bars and the number of drunken driving accidents in town.
Lawrence received a threeyear, $14,000 grant from the Kansas Department of Transportation. In return, the police department was required to have six sobriety checkpoints each year, Fultz said. This is the first year of the program.
The Douglas County Sheriff's Office received a similar grant to conduct sobriety checkpoints throughout the county. It will also have a checkpoint from 11 tonight to 2 a.m. tomorrow in the
300 block of County Road 1055 north of Baldwin.
The grant money is used to pay the salaries of the 10 to 15 officers involved in each checkpoint. All the officers are working on a volunteer basis, Fultz said, which means they are paid overtime for their work.
How it works
The checkpoints must take place between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m., according to state regulations.
Fultz said traffic was blocked off in one direction. This time it will be southbound traffic on Iowa Street.
A sign is placed about a block before the checkpoint to inform drivers that they are approaching a sobriety checkpoint.
An officer directs traffic into one lane, where officers approach each car.
"We're trying to detect the intoxicated driver," Fultz said. "We have to have reasonable suspicion to pull someone out of the line."
If a driver appears to be sober, police hands the driver
Checkpoint
What: A sobriety
checkpoint.
Where: The southbound lane of Iowa Street at the intersection of 22nd Street.
When: 12:00 noon to eight.
When: 11:30 p.m. tonight to 1:30 a.m. tomorrow
to 1:30 a.m. tomorrow
Why: The Lawrence Police Department received a $14,000 grant from the Kansas Department of Transportation. The department is required to conduct six sobriety checkpoints a year for three years.
and passengers a pamphlet about drinking and driving and waves the car through the line, Fultz said.
If a driver appears to be intoxicated, Fultz said, the car is pulled out of the line, and field sobriety tests are administered.
Fultz said each checkpoint usually resulted in only two or three arrests for drunken driving.
Chris Nolan, Lenexa senior,
said he was stopped at a sobriety
checkpoint around 1 a.m.
last October.
"I was drunk, but my girlfriend was sober and she was driving," Nolan said.
He said the police just gave them a pamphlet and flagged the car through.
Nolan said he didn't mind the inconvenience of being stopped and thought the sobriety checkpoints were good for Lawrence.
"From what I know of drinking and driving in this town, I'd say we probably need them," Nolan said.
Fultz said most of the response about the checkpoints had been positive.
He said that when the police conducted the sobriety checkpoint in the 1200 block of Tennessee Street, there was a party at a house nearby.
"The students sat in the lawn on couches and talked to us," Fultz said. "They said they were afraid to get behind the wheel if they'd been drinking because they knew there was a checkpoint."
Dan Wadley, Topeka senior,
said he didn't like checkpoints
because they could lead to a
"The students sat in the lawn on couches and talked to us. They said they were afraid to get behind the wheel if they'd been drinking because they knew there was a checkpoint."
Sgt. Kirk Fultz
Lawrence Police Department
DWI.
"I avoid them like a homework assignment on Sunday afternoon," Wadley said.
But he agreed they were probably a good thing for the city.
Contact Craigmile at 864-4810
Political science professors assert that a war against innocent civilians is not the answer
Attacks on Afghanistan could be a violation of U.N. rules on warfare
By Matt Norton Kansan staff writer
Despite President Bush's declaration that he wants suspected World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," two University of Kansas professors think the United States should use extreme caution in retaliating against last week's attack.
Deborah Gerner, associate professor of political science and Middle East expert, said it made more sense to bring the attackers to justice through the courts rather than on the battlefield.
"I think it is both immoral and impractical to be pursuing the kind of response that it appears we are going to pursue," Gerner said.
She said the United States should focus on the attackers as individuals who broke the law. Declaring a war would put many innocent lives at stake, she said.
"It's almost impossible for the Afghanis to rise up and overthrow the Taliban, and the Taliban do not represent the Afghani people," Gerner said. "You can't have a dictatorship — which is what you've got there — then hold the people responsible."
Even if the terrorist attacks did constitute an act of war, and Gerner emphasized she did not think this was so, she said she worried that U.S. retaliation would not satisfy international rules regarding warfare.
Among those rules is that the military response is proportional to the attack or threat placed on the United States.
"It's just not at all clear to me that going in and bombing Afghanistan, which is going to end up killing a lot of innocent people, could possibly be proportional," she said.
Sharon O'Brien Fixico, associate professor of political science and expert on international relations and international law, said that under United Nations guidelines, it was difficult to declare war on a non-state such as bin Laden and his supporters.
She said war could be conducted only between armies of nations after diplomatic solutions had been pursued. Soldiers must be in uniform and openly carrying their weapons, as well as being under the direction of a commander. Only military installations could be targeted.
"You can't just go in and bomb people," O'Brien Fixico said. "We've spent the last 50 years figuring out rules and regulations to prevent that."
She said the United Nations did have laws against terrorism, but exact definitions of terrorism did not exist. To illustrate the point, she said Great Britain had considered the U.S. War of Independence to be an act of terrorism.
The attacks on the United States do not fit the criteria, O'Brien Fixico said.
She said she recalled two instances in the last century where known terrorist
"I think it is both immoral and impractical to be pursuing the kind of response that it appears we are going to pursue."
Deborah Gerner Associate professor of political science and Middle East expert
"The old adage that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter can be true," O'Brien Fixico said. "It can change with perspective."
leaders were later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Still, she said the international community stood solidly behind a proportional response by the United States against bin Laden.
Gerner said bringing the terrorist group members before a court was the best way to do that.
"If we say, 'We're going to search for these people, we want support from the police and international intelligence groups around the world,' that's something that's a lot easier to build a coalition around," Gerner said.
Contact Norton at 864-4810
SEEING BETWEEN THE LINES
J. E. WILSON/KANSAN
Fallon Farokhi, Lawrence sophomore, works on a weaving project on the lawn of Stauffer-Flint Hall. An Arts and Crafts event was sponsored by Student Union Activities yesterday.
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