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Abstract
The purpose of the current study is to provide empirical data on cases of police driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol and/or drugs. The study identifies events that may have influenced the decision to arrest, including associated traffic accidents, fatalities, officer resistance, the refusal of field sobriety tests, and the refusal of blood alcohol content tests. The study is a quantitative content analysis of news articles identified through the Google News search engine using 48 automated Google Alerts queries. Data are analyzed on 782 DUI arrest cases of officers employed by 511 nonfederal law enforcement agencies throughout the United States. The study is the only study known to describe police officer DUI arrests as they occur within police agencies across the United States.
Acknowledgements
This project was supported by Award No. 2011-IJ-CX-0024, awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.
Notes
1. Cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia are not in counties. Included in our count are officers who were arrested for DUI while employed by law enforcement agencies in nine Virginia independent cities and six Virginia counties. The cities of Baltimore, Maryland, St. Louis, Missouri, and Carson City, Nevada, are also independent cities that are separate from counties, but there are no DUI cases involving officers employed by agencies in those three cities in our sample.
2. All cases that involved an officer arrested for DUI while driving a police vehicle were initially coded as ‘on-duty’ because (a) the public generally considers any officer driving a police vehicle to be ‘on-duty,’ and (b) law enforcement agencies often require ‘off-duty’ officers who are driving police vehicles to be available to respond to emergencies (Stinson, Liederbach, et al.Citation2012, p. 158, n. 1).
3. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) classifies certain drugs of abuse as ‘other depressants.’ They are Ambien, Sonata, Meprobamate, Chloral Hydrate, Barbiturates, and Methaqualone (Quaalude). The medical uses for these drugs include antianxiety, sedative, and hypnotic purposes (U.S. Department of Justice Citation2005).
4. In order to shed light on the influence of the state variable, the outcome for the second CHAID tree predicting job loss was compared to the Freedom in the 50 States Index (see Rugar and Sorens Citation2011). The states were listed by their probability of job loss and then compared to the freedom indexes three categories; overall freedom, economic freedom, and personal freedom. This comparison was created to determine if any relationship existed between the probability of job loss and the states ranking in the Freedom Index. The comparison produced results that were not consistent. Job loss has no direct relationship with each of the freedom indices. The comparison was not made between the Freedom Index and the conviction variable due to the multiple level splits within the decision trees.
5. Findings derived from studies on the prevalence of drug use among samples of non-police drunk drivers may be used to suggest comparisons between the two populations of drivers, although direct comparisons are impossible given the different methodologies employed. For example, Neuteboom and Zweipfenning (Citation1984) tested blood samples of suspected drunk drivers and found that 9.7% used drugs in combination with alcohol. Lillsunde et al. (Citation1996) tested blood samples taken from drivers suspected of DUI during two separate years and found that 7% and 26.8% used drugs in combination with alcohol (see also Kelly et al.Citation2009, who found in a meta-analysis that drugs were detected in up to 25% of drivers involved in motor vehicle accidents).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Philip Matthew Stinson
Philip Matthew Stinson, Sr., J.D., Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Criminal Justice Program at Bowling Green State University. His primary research interests include the study of police crime and police integrity, and he is currently principal investigator in a study of police crime funded by the National Institute of Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice. His research has been published in Criminal Justice Policy Review, International Journal of Police Science and Management, Police Quarterly, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, and The Prison Journal.
John Liederbach
John Liederbach, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Criminal Justice Program at Bowling Green State University. His primary research interests include the study of police behavior across community types, suburban and rural policing, police corruption and crime, and white collar crime. He has published in numerous journals, including American Journal of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice Review, Criminal Justice Policy Review, and Justice Quarterly.
Steven L. Brewer
Steven L. Brewer, Jr., Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Administration of Justice Program at Penn State Shenango.
Natalie Erin Todak
Natalie E. Todak, M.S.C.J., is a doctoral student in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University.
