March 03--The secretary of state's office is stepping up reminders to police to mail in DUI paperwork after a Tribune investigation that found bureaucratic errors regularly helped drunken drivers avoid mandatory license suspensions.
The agency, which oversees suspensions, will send a letter this week to all police departments across the state, said agency spokesman Dave Druker. The letter, still being drafted, is expected to note that the law requires police fill out and mail a special form to the state so it knows to suspend an arrestee's license.
Illinois law mandates a statutory summary suspension for those arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. The suspension is supposed to occur 46 days after an arrest -- regardless of the status of the criminal case. And the only way to get out of it, by law, is if an arrestee convinces a judge to rescind the summary suspension.
But a recent Tribune investigation found another way the suspension was regularly avoided: thousands of Chicago area DUI arrests were not being logged into the state's system, and the state had no way to know to suspend the licenses. The state blamed the problem on police not sending in the paperwork, although several departments maintained they always sent in the paperwork and assumed it was correctly logged.
The Tribune found that the breakdowns didn't always benefit drunken drivers. Some got judges to rescind the suspensions, even though they weren't technically on the books. Other arrestees already had lost their licenses or were later sentenced in ways that triggered a license loss. But the Tribune found case after case of drunken drivers -- including repeat offenders -- who were allowed to remain on the roads solely because of the apparent mistakes.
In one county that could be studied more thoroughly, DuPage, as many as one in 15 drivers kept licenses because of breakdowns.
Beyond sending letters, Druker said the secretary of state also will place notices in law enforcement newsletters and publications reminding police of the paperwork requirement.
"We are trying to cover any breakdown in communication that might exist," he said.
Druker also said the agency will begin working with the Illinois State Police to discuss ways of using that agency's software to allow officers across Illinois to report arrests electronically -- as happens in some other states.
DUI advocates said they also plan to raise the issue in a hearing this week being held by the secretary of state's traffic safety task force. The task force was already planning to discuss an issue previously uncovered by the Tribune: suburbs that regularly agree to let drivers keep their licenses, often in exchange for hefty fines.
jmahr@tribpub.com
acaputo@tribpub.com
