Articles Posted in DUI

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DUIThe Arlington Heights Police Department has announced that they will have a Traffic Enforcement Campaign in place from June 26 to July 9, 2017. The Traffic Enforcement Campaign coincides with the upcoming Fourth of July weekend. The Traffic Enforcement Campaign will check motorists and vehicles for seatbelt violations, DUI driving, and a roadside safety checkpoint. The first roadside safety checkpoint will take place on June 28th on Arlington Heights Road just south of Algonquin Road. A roadside safety checkpoint is a way that the police can look inside your vehicle and pull you over to the side if they smell something, or see something inside the car, or suspect that the driver is up to no good. What the Arlington Heights Police are planning on doing this weekend is commonly known as a “Police Roadblock.” The Arlington Heights Police will be looking for people that are not wearing their seat belts and are Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol or Drugs. The enforcement campaign is being paid for with Federal Traffic Safety Funds and administered by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

If the Arlington Heights Police pull you over and suspect that you are Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol, you will be asked to pull over and exit your vehicle. The police officer will ask you to perform a series of tests on the side of the road (Field Sobriety Tests) to determine whether you were Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol. If the police officer has reason to believe that you are drunk, the officer will ask you to take a Preliminary Breath Test (PBT). The results of the PBT test cannot be used against you in court to prove that you were Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol. But the results of the PBT can be used to establish probable cause, or a valid reason, for the police officer to place you under arrest for a DUI. If the police officer believes that you failed those tests and the PBT detected alcohol in your breath, the officer may take you down to the Arlington Heights Police Department and ask that you take a breathalyzer test. The Arlington Heights police officer will inform you that if you take the breathalyzer test and the test registers a blood alcohol content of .08 or above, not only will you be arrested and charged with a DUI, but your license will be suspended for 6 months. The Arlington Heights police officer will inform you that if you refuse to take a breathalyzer test, your license will be suspended for 12 months. This license suspension is known as the Statutory Summary. If you refuse to take a breathalyzer test the officer may still arrest you and charge you with a DUI if the officer believes that he has enough evidence to prove you guilty of a DUI in Court. Proof that could be used against you could be the results of the Field Sobriety Tests, the officer’s observations and opinion, any statements you made to the officer, any witness statements, and any video of you of the Field Sobriety Tests.

If you are charged with a DUI in Arlington Heights, you will be allowed to post a cash bond at the Police Station and go home.  Your car will be impounded and you will need to pay fees to the Village of Arlington Heights to get your car back.  The longer you wait to get your car back the higher the fees will be.  You will be assigned a court date at the Cook County Courthouse in Rolling Meadows. All Arlington Heights DUI cases are held at the Rolling Meadows Courthouse. The Statutory Summary Suspension of your driver’s license will take effect on the 46th day following your arrest for a DUI in Arlington Heights. The only way to stop the Statutory Summary Summary Suspension of your driver’s license, or to reinstate a suspended license following a Statutory Summary Suspension, is to file a Petition to Rescind the Statutory Summary Suspension in Court. The Petition to Rescind the Statutory Summary Suspension can be filed anytime after you are arrested. However, you cannot file a Petition to Rescind the Statutory Summary Suspension more than 90 days after you are arrested for a DUI.

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DUIIllinois has some very strict laws, rules, and regulations involving DUI’s. I frequently get questions from clients asking about whether they should or should not take a breathalyzer when they are requested to by a police officer.  There is no simple yes or no answer to that question. Whether someone who has been stopped for a DUI should submit to a breathalyzer test or not is a very complicated question that depends on each case and the specific facts surrounding each case.  All I can do is explain what the legal consequences of a refusal to submit to a breathalyzer test would be and what could happen if you take a breathalyzer test and you fail that test.

Let’s talk about what a breathalyzer test is.  The only way to test how much alcohol is in somebody’s blood is with a blood test.  A breathalyzer test measures the amount of alcohol in your breath.  That reading gives a very accurate estimate of how much alcohol is in your blood.  A breathalyzer test is performed by blowing into a machine which registers a reading.  The results from that machine have been accepted in court as reliable and admissible evidence in DUI cases throughout Illinois.

Under Illinois Law, driving is a privilege not a right.  Therefore, when you are given a driver’s license in Illinois you give the police the implied consent to ask you to submit to a breathalyzer test when you are requested to do so by a police officer.  You can refuse to submit to a breathalyzer test when requested to take one but the consequences are very severe.  Under Illinois law, if you refuse to submit to a breathalyzer test your license will be suspended for one year.  If you are taken to a hospital the police can force the hospital to draw your blood to measure the amount of alcohol in your blood.  That’s part of the implied consent that the law implies that you gave the police when you were issued a driver’s license in Illinois.

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DUI

Being arrested for a DUI can be a very confusing and stressful experience for most people.  Based on my over-27 years of experience in handling DUI cases throughout Chicago, Cook County, DuPage County Kane County, and Lake County, I can tell you that most of the people that I have represented for a DUI are not criminals, nor are they bad people.  Most of the people that I have represented for a DUI are hard-working citizens who have no criminal record.  Some of them have never even received a traffic ticket.  They simply made a mistake and were at the wrong place at the wrong time when they were caught driving when they had too much to drink.  As a result, most of the people calling me wanting to discuss their DUI have lots of questions and want some guidance on what they need to do and what is about to happen to them.  I want to take this opportunity to explain the process and what to expect.

If a police officer takes you down to the police station and asks you to take a breathalyzer test you have the right to refuse to take a breathalyzer test.  But if you refuse to take a breathalyzer test, you will be facing a mandatory 12-month suspension of your driver’s license.  If you agree to take a breathalyzer test then you must listen very carefully to the instructions given to you by the police officer.  If you fail to properly blow into the machine, that failure will be considered a refusal to take a breathalyzer test which will result in the 12-month suspension.  It’s not enough to argue you tried to follow the police officer’s instructions the best you could but failed to provide an adequate breath sample.  It is your responsibility to listen to the instructions and provide the adequate breath sample.

If you take a breathalyzer test and the test indicates that the blood alcohol level in your system was .08 or above, you will be facing a six-month suspension of your driver’s license.  The suspension of your driver’s license will begin 46 days after the arrest.  Until then you can legally drive your car.

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