DUI Checkpoint Advice

DUI

I’m Don Pumphrey Jr. for the Pumphrey Law Firm.

The question was posed to me –  What do you do if you pull up on a DUI checkpoint?

Well a little piece of advice and what you need to know here in the state of Florida, if they’re going to have an operation like a DUI checkpoint they have to publicize it.  If you follow our YouTube channel or follow us on Facebook or stay in touch with our website and get push notifications, we notify people who are on our list when they are putting a check point out, here locally or anywhere in this particular region when we get that information.  That being said the best thing to do, don’t drink and drive!  However if you come up to a checkpoint and you haven’t been drinking or if you’ve been drinking but you’re not impaired – it’s not illegal to have a drink and drive, it’s illegal to be impaired or have too much alcohol on board – you have a couple of options.  The rules state, and the case law supports the fact, that the officers have to give an alternative route to any checkpoint – look for that route.  Don’t do anything illegal like an illegal u-turn, don’t drive off the road or do anything crazy, be safe – safety is your utmost concern.  As you go through the checkpoint, if you choose to go through it, be polite and respectful to the officers, have your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance ready and always be respectful.  Only give the information that’s required by law, which is your personal information, what they call identifying information, and you’re not needing to answer any other questions to that because you’re going to get the question – Have you been drinking tonight?  The way you answer that is this, you just respectfully say “Officer I’d rather not answer any questions unless I have an attorney present or on the phone” and then give us a call.  We’ll be more than happy to walk you through it, we’ve done it a number of times and we just want you to be safe and we don’t want you to get arrested or have a record or have to come and hire someone like us to represent you and try to make it as if it never happened.

For the Pumphrey Law Firm, I’m Don Pumphrey Jr.

Please be safe, don’t drink and drive!

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