Really, there is no way you could miss it, even if you've had a few beers.
The two electronic billboards, the cars slowing down, the flashing lights from two police cruisers, the police officers standing in the road — you would really have to be inebriated to miss the sobriety checkpoints conducted by the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.
A right down Maggie Street or a U-turn at 10th Street before the actual checkpoint might save an intoxicated driver from spending a night in jail and several hundred dollars in fines. But as Cpl. William Porter of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office tells me, drunken people never think clearly.
"We post it, and we give them a way out," he says. "But sometimes, as you can see, some people don't take the way out."
Porter nods his head to the three people deputies have already detained since starting the checkpoint at 10 p.m. They're sitting under the bright lights of the "BAT mobile" — a 37-foot RV outfitted with equipment to test blood-alcohol levels — with their heads down and handcuffs tight on their wrists.
"When someone is inebriated he's not functioning correctly," Porter says. "He'll drive right up here."
Which is exactly what the first man arrested tonight did: drove his truck right up to one of the deputies and announced his sloshed status.
Porter shakes his head. He knows he shouldn't be surprised: it's just another night at a DUI checkpoint.
As several people will find out tonight, 2007 is definitely not the year to be drinking and driving. Sheriff's deputies have already arrested more than 620 offenders this year as part of Operation 3D, a countywide, multi-agency DUI enforcement program. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office instituted Operation 3D two years ago after a department report identified Hillsborough County as the state leader in alcohol-related traffic fatalities. Thousands of arrests later, the Sheriff's Office has the largest DUI enforcement squad in the state with 25 deputies working in each of the county's four districts. (That's not counting the help they receive from the Tampa Police Department and state troopers.)
And though Hillsborough County still leads the state in alcohol-related fatalities, it recently earned another distinction. Law enforcement officials arrested more than 6,000 people last year on drunk-driving related charges, making Hillsborough County the state leader in DUI arrests.
Operation 3D, paid for by over $2 million in federal and state grants, combines "saturation" patrols and sobriety checkpoints in targeted areas with a history of alcohol-related fatalities. A few weeks ago, deputies staked out Fletcher Avenue near the University of South Florida. At the end of the month, they plan to snag drunk drivers on congested East Hillsborough Avenue. But tonight, they are in the rural town of Wimauma in South Hillsborough County.
"From working here in the past it's an area with a lot of DUIs," Porter says. "We might hit this area twice this month."
By 10:30 there's a steady stream of traffic lined up at the checkpoint. Deputies wearing neon green vests and waving red traffic wands direct motorists going westbound on State Road 674 into the circular driveway of the Wimauma Church of God.
As motorists creep slowly, one of three deputies will shine a flashlight into each vehicle and request license and registration. It's during these first seconds, as the driver searches for his or her information, that the deputy decides if a sobriety test is needed.
If you pass the initial inspection, the deputy waves you down the driveway where it empties onto the road again. But if the deputy suspects anything or your documents are not legit, you'll be asked to exit your vehicle. Another deputy will escort you to a wall and give you the standard walk-the-line and touch-your-nose tests. The deputies are rarely wrong: Tonight, each person they pull out of the car will go to jail for a DUI or drug possession charge. Or both.
Which is the case for one middle-aged woman driving a white Ford Escort. After a brief protest, her blonde ponytail flipping around her face, an officer escorts her to the BAT mobile for a blood-alcohol test while another officer empties out her leather purse on a table. She emerges from the BAT mobile 20 minutes later, shackled, and takes a seat behind a large wooden table officers have set up outside for processing. To her right, a red-faced man with a mullet; to her left, a Mexican man in an orange jersey.
The scene is certainly a somber one. At one point, there are four people sitting behind this table, looking straight ahead or down at their feet. I try to speak to one man seated at the table's end who is sweating profusely, but he ignores me. In fact, he looks almost in tears. For good reason, too. Even a first-time DUI charge in Florida carries a harsher sentence than most misdemeanors: up to $500 in fines and six months in jail, plus suspension of your driver's license. Not to mention the insurance hassles and possible loss of a job. (And, possibly, a reporter taking your picture.)
Corporal Porter, though, is upbeat.
"We're not making arrests," says the 18-year veteran of the HCSO. "We're saving lives."
As the 10-deputy crew continues to stop cars, I watch the faces of drivers pulling into the driveway. They all look worried, eyes wide and driving with both hands firmly on the steering wheel. Those who are released seem to give a sigh of relief.
But two Mexicans in a red Chevy Cavalier are not so lucky. After the young driver fails to produce a driver's license, the officer asks him, in Spanish, to step out of the vehicle. The other man in the passenger seat leans against his seatbelt with his eyes full of dread.
It turns out the man, most likely a migrant worker, is not inebriated, but he doesn't have any identification. Although deputies do not have the capability to check the man's legal status in the country, Porter explains, they still must make sure people have the proper documents to drive. So the young man joins the others at the table for questioning.
It's the last car we see for a while.
"It's slow tonight," Porter says.
At other locations, deputies can stop as many as 200 cars an hour. But after two hours, this checkpoint has only seen 65 cars and six arrests. Porter, satisfied, decides to end the Wimauma checkpoint for the night.
"If you think one of these people could go out and hit someone, then we've probably saved a life tonight," he says.
But before he's able to remove the orange cones from the church's driveway, three more cars pull up. Porter motions for deputies to check them out.
These last three stops turn out to be fruitful: Deputies ask all three drivers out of their cars and conduct sobriety tests. Each one fails. After several minutes inside the BAT mobile, they join the rest of the drunks at the table, waiting for their night in jail.
This article appears in Jul 11-17, 2007.