Redondo Beach Announces Plans to Conduct a DUI Sobriety/License Checkpoint

The Redondo Beach Police Department has released plans to operate a DUI and drivers license checkpoint at an undisclosed location tonight and into tomorrow morning.  A local newspaper has reported that RBPD police records show that in the past three years drunk drivers  have caused 84 injury crashes in Redondo Beach, resulting in over 100 critical injuries.  Money for the sobriety roadblock is provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, says the Daily Breeze.  The paper has posed the following question:  Do The Police Have to Notify the Public in Advance of there intention to conduct a checkpoint?    The paper correctly stated that there is no longer a legal requirement to do so, however, one Redondo Beach DUI Attorney points out that there are a litany of other constitutuional mandates that render the DUI checkpoints constitutionally permissible.   The California Supreme Court has affirmed many of the other previously handed down criteria such as a plan created by supervisory police personnel, rather than the officers in the police officers in the field. In 1993, the court ruled that police were no longer required to provide advance notice when scheduling sobriety checkpoints. Legal scholars have opined that the current framework for analyzing these roadblocks may be flawed and future Court cases will likely be necessary to effectively promulgate a more precise set of rules for law enforcement to follow .