Police in Washington, D.C., have all but stopped arresting people for driving under the influence because there is only one machine in the entire city certified to test blood-alcohol content.
Earlier this summer, the only employee who was trained to certify the breath testing machines quit, leaving the city with Intoximeters that it couldn’t use, because the machines need to be tested regularly, The Washington Post reports.
The city started with eight machines, but now the only usable machine is located in a police station in the Northwest corner of the city, just inside the Maryland border.
The number of people arrested for driving under the influence has plummeted during the time since the other Intoximeters went offline. Police arrested just 179 people in DUI cases between July 26 and Sept. 15. During that same time period in 2014, police arrested 249 people on the same charges.
Instead of charging people with driving under the influence, police are choosing to charge suspects with driving while impaired, a much less serious offense that is easier to prove in court.
Ben Fetting, a DC Police Union representative from the Third District station, told the Post it’s just “not worth the effort” to try and charge suspects with driving under the influence when the case will probably get thrown out in court due to lack of evidence.
It is extremely difficult to arrest suspected drunk drivers with the breath machines out of commission, Fetting said, because it can take officers several hours to transport the drivers to the single operating machine from some places in the city.
With the city currently experiencing a spike in violence and murders it hasn’t seen in nearly a decade, those officers can’t afford to spend hours transporting suspected drunk drivers across town.
So far this year, 114 people have been murdered in the district, representing a more than 47 percent increase over the same time in 2014 and more than the total number of murders committed in all of last year.
In an effort to alleviate the pressure on the one working machine, the police department hired a new supervisor to certify the machines, and expects to three additional Intoximeters operating this week.
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