The much-publicized Minnesota drunk driving crackdown, which took place last weekend, was a great success according to state officials with the Department of Public Safety. The agency trumpeted its accomplishment after the massive law enforcement blitz that took place last Friday night and early Saturday morning. The Minnesota Department of Public Safety flooded the streets in and around the Twin Cities with more than 150 squad cars whose only mission was sweeping up suspected drunk drivers.

According to officials, the law enforcement push resulted in 160 arrests across the state, much more than an average night despite unseasonably cool weather, which likely kept many people at home and off the roads. The State Highway Patrol says that drunk driving crashes happen disproportionately during the warm summer months. The May 10th campaign was thus intended to act as a warning message for drivers at the beginning of the summer fishing season to be aware that cops are on the lookout.

Of the 160 arrested, 100 of those drivers were in the metro area. That’s more than the total number of driver arrested across the entire state on a typical weekend night. Nathan Bowie, a spokesman at Minnesota DPS says that the one-night campaign amounted to the largest coordinated DWI event in Minnesota history. Not only did the agency have cop cars on the roads and checkpoints in operation, but all the major overhead electronic message boards carried warnings about enforcement zones. Additionally, the Department of Public Safety decided to turn to Twitter to live broadcast their string of arrests.

After word spread about the police intention to use Twitter to broadcast announcements about arrests, officials with the state made a clarification saying that they would only announce the occurrence of arrests, not the names of those that were arrested.

The problem was that the attempt at avoiding public shaming failed when another Twitter account, mpls_dwi_arrests, began using the same trending tag of “#May10DWI” and proceeded to Tweet the names and ages of all those arrested during the drunk driving roundup. Police disavowed using that Twitter account and said that whoever was operating it was not affiliated with the State Patrol or Department of Public Safety in any way.

Whether the account was affiliated with any state agency does not matter to those who had their names plastered across the internet. Their online reputations have now been negatively impacted in an unsettling act of public shaming.

Source: StarTribune.com.

Police in Minnesota have announced that this coming weekend is going to be a tough one for anyone considering drinking before getting behind the wheel. The Minnesota Department of Public Safety has announced that this weekend it will launch its biggest crack down on drunk drivers ever. Authorities say they will have 150 squad cards on the streets in and around Minneapolis searching for drivers who are impaired.

The big push will begin late Friday night and continue well into early morning hours on Saturday. The campaign will focus on the areas in and immediately surrounding St. Paul and Minneapolis. The goal of the operation is to sweep up potentially hundreds of drivers in the Twin Cities in one night, not only keeping them off the road and away from other drivers, but also sending a strong message to others that the police are lurking waiting on intoxicated motorists.

Another component of the latest sweep is a surprising one, the Department of Public Safety says that it will tweet any and all arrests it makes during the one-night sweep, revealing the names of those that are arrested. The department says that it will use its official Twitter account, @MnDPS_DPS, to live report all arrests that take place as well as promote the extensive patrols it intends to conduct throughout the upcoming summer. The department says that it wants to demonstrate how seriously it takes incidents of drunk driving and how far it is willing to go to curb the deadly problem.

The move is surprisingly aggressive and has some people asking whether the goal is to save lives or simply embarrass people. It seems as if the department has decided to publicly humiliate drivers who had a few too many, hoping that this serves as a warning to others in the future. Another question is whether the campaign will mainly target younger drivers who have a presence on Twitter. After all, the demographic for the social media site skews on the young side and many older people may not even be aware that their names appeared in a tweet.

The campaign should raise some eyebrows given the damage that such a public message about drunk driving could do to harm the reputations of drivers mixed up in the sweep. In today’s electronic era a person’s web presence can be extremely important for their career and future opportunities. Bosses frequently scan the internet for articles about a person as do admissions officers in college. A tweet by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety could be incredibly damaging to some individuals, especially in cases that go on to be dropped or dismissed. After all, the initial tweet about the impaired driving arrest will be broadcast for all to see, but what about the subsequent dismissal? Will the Department of Public Safety be issuing public apologies for all those it was wrong about?

Some articles have decried the campaign, saying it amounts to a modern version of putting someone in the stocks to be publicly taunted. The crackdown campaign will be broadcast on Twitter and can be followed by searching for the phrase #May10DWI.

Source: “If You Drink and Drive in Minneapolis or St. Paul Your Name Will End Up on Twitter,” by Glen Tickle, published at Geekosystem.com.

Crawford v. Washington was not merely about the spousal privilege.  Miranda v. Arizona did not solely concern statements from an alleged rapist.  Terry v. Ohio did not just involve suspicious looking people.  And, Missouri v. McNeely is not just about warrantless blood draws.

For some people in the legal community, Missouri v. McNeely simply means that law enforcement may not perform a warrantless blood draw in a DWI case based solely on single factor exigency.  Most experts know, however, that decisions from the United States Supreme Court on constitutional issues, especially the Fourth Amendment, have long lasting impacts on legal issues and are not simply narrowly-focused opinions.  The Court’s decision in McNeely may do just that, regardless, of whether a person arrested on a DWI takes a breath, blood, or urine test, or refuses a test altogether.

The Court recognizes breath, blood, and urine tests as searches.  They all involve intrusions beyond the surface of the human body and infringe on expectations of privacy.  Blood and urine tests are especially intrusive because they can reveal a host of facts about a person’s private medical state.   

Because all evidentiary tests in DWI cases are searches, they are protected by the Fourth Amendment.  Warrants are almost never sought by the police in DWI cases.  Therefore, a warrantless search almost always occurs.  Under the Fourth Amendment, all warrantless searches are per se unreasonable unless an exception applies.  The most common exceptions are consent, search incident to arrest, exigency, plain view, stop and frisk, hot pursuit, and the automobile exception.  Single-factor exigency is dead as a result of the Court’s decision in McNeely.  Plain view, hot pursuit, and the automobile exception should not apply in this context.  This leaves consent, search incident to arrest, and exigency under the totality of the circumstances as the most common exceptions used in arguing DWI cases. 

For consent to be valid, it must be actual, free, and voluntary.  Not simply implied by law.  In Minnesota, consent is a real issue.  Those arrested on DWIs are read the Minnesota Implied Consent Advisory, which includes a threat: “refusal to take a test is a crime” and then as part of the same advisory, they are asked to take a test.  If the police come to your door without a warrant and ask to come in, they do not first tell you that if you refuse to let them in, they will charge you with a crime.  That would simply be coercion, just like Minnesota’s Implied Consent Advisory.  Minnesota is only one of four states that makes refusal to test a crime on a person’s first offense.  Of those four states, Minnesota’s refusal carries the harshest penalty. 

As the Court noted in McNeely, there may very well be circumstances where the exigencies are so great that securing a warrant is not reasonable.  Just like the Court decided in Schmerber.  The vast majority of DWI cases, however, involve no such exigencies.  There is often ample time in between the arrest and transportation to a police station or hospital for testing, which means there is also enough time to secure a warrant in this day and age of technology.       

For now, warrants are not sought on routine DWIs in Minnesota.  In light of the United States Supreme Court decision in McNeely that will hopefully eventually change or Minnesota will revise its Implied Consent Law.  Just as Miranda, Terry, and Crawford has its progeny of cases, McNeely will too.  Since the McNeely Court informed Minnesota it was wrongly interpreting Schmerber, hopefully Minnesota will be more careful and take its time to fairly interpret McNeely.      

The author of this article is Robert Ambrose.  Robert is an associate attorney with Kans Law Firm, LLC and he is known for aggressively defending individuals charged with all levels of DWI offenses.  If you are charged with a DWI and would like a free consultation, please contact us.