A former police officer in Contra Costa County has pleaded not guilty to charges that include setting up people for DUI arrests and several other crimes.

Christopher Butler was a member of the Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team at the time of the alleged crimes. He has been charged with a number of crimes that include extortion, and robbery.

Christopher Butler and Norman Wielsch were part of the Central Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team. Last year, both men were indicted for stealing methamphetamine and marijuana from evidence lockers. Those crimes allegedly occurred in 2010. The two had been allegedly stealing those drugs in order to resell them. According to prosecutors, the also ran a brothel in Pleasant Hill.

The Central Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team was funded by the Department Of Justice and Contra Costa County police agencies. The team was disbanded after Butler and Wielsch were arrested for the marijuana and methamphetamine thefts. Wielsch has pleaded not guilty to charges against him.

Butler was a private investigator, and he admitted that he had set up several dirty DUIs. These DUI arrests were set up behalf of wives in divorce cases. These wives wanted to increase their favorability in child custody and other divorce-related matters. Under the scheme, Butler would use attractive women whose job would be lure the unsuspecting husband in a bar, and incite him into driving under the influence of alcohol. The scheme was fairly successful, and shocked law enforcement officers and Los Angeles DUI lawyers.

Other people have also been prosecuted in the same scheme. For instance, former San Ramon police officer Louis Lombardi was convicted, and sentenced to 3 years in federal prison after he entered a plea deal. A former Danville police officer is also currently being prosecuted in the same dirty DUI scheme.

A high ranking official in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving after she was found passed out at the wheel of her car on the Pasadena Freeway. The female motorist is a top ranking civil official in the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department.

According to authorities, they received a number of 911 calls from drivers alerting police to a car that was stopped in the middle lane of the Pasadena Freeway. When California Highway patrol troopers arrived at the scene, they found Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Civilian Director Natalie Salazar passed out at the wheel. She was allegedly drunk.

Salazar was arrested, and blood alcohol tests later confirmed that she had been intoxicated. Her blood alcohol level at the time was .20, which is more than twice the legally allowed limit in the state of California. She was booked on suspicion of DUI, and has since been released on bail.

This is not the first DUI arrest for Salazar. In 2009, she had been arrested for DUI, and had been convicted. After she was convicted, she was placed on probation. However, she continued to retain her post at the Sheriff’s Department. This time round, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has not been as accommodating. The Sheriff's Department has announced that she has been placed on leave.

Penalties for repeat DUI convictions in California can be stiff. For a 2nd DUI offense, a person can be fined between $1,800 and $2,800, and could have his license suspended for up to 2 years. Additionally, persons convicted of more than one DUI offense in California must have ignition interlock devices installed in their vehicles. In Los Angeles County, even first-time DUI offenders must have an ignition interlock device installed as part of a pilot program. If the program is successful, then Los Angeles DUI lawyers expect that the program will be expanded across the state.

Video footage of Hollywood star Mel Gibson's behavior in his cell after his arrest for DUI in 2006 could be shown to a jury if the police officer who arrested him has his way.

Sheriff Deputy James Mee, who happens to be Jewish, was allegedly the target of Gibson's racial slurs after he pulled over the star in Malibu, California. The Sheriff Deputy suspected the star of driving under the influence, and pulled him over. However, soon after, Gibson went on a rant, calling Mee a whole bunch of racial slurs and attacking his faith. Since then, Mee says that he has been subjected to taunts and discrimination in his own department. Mee has since filed a lawsuit against his department, alleging that his superiors discriminated against him based on his Jewish faith.

What does this have to do with Gibson's DUI case? Mee is asking for video footage taken of Gibson after his DUI arrest to be shown to the jury. There is little information released about what exactly the footage contains, but it is believed to include such gems as the actor attempting to climb the bars of his cell, throwing his phone around, and trying to urinate on his cell floor.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department insists that there is no need for the footage to be released, and that all this would do is embarrass Gibson who has since apologized for his anti-Jewish rant.

Any Los Angeles DUI lawyer would agree. This footage has little to do with the officer’s discrimination case against his department. A judge will soon decide whether the video should be shown to a jury. However, any such move is likely to be strongly opposed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Many Los Angeles DUI lawyers have strongly opposed a new program that is currently on in Tulare, Alameda, Sacramento and Los Angeles counties, requiring first-time DUI offenders to have ignition interlock devices installed in all their vehicles.  Currently, ignition interlock devices are only mandated for drivers convicted of DUI and driving under a suspended license.  The current pilot program will now cover first-time offenders in all the four counties.  What's worse, if the authorities like how the program performs in these counties, they are likely to expand it across the state. 

The ignition device works by detecting alcohol on the motorist’s breath, and preventing him from driving if the alcohol content is above the limit of .03%.

Los Angeles criminal defense lawyers feel that the program is not likely to have the effect that its promoters hope it will.  In 2004, the California Department of Motor Vehicles conducted a study on the effectiveness of mandating ignition interlock devices on the vehicles of DUI offenders.  The state found that the number of repeat drunk driving offenders with prior DUI convictions dropped significantly when they had the devices in these cars.  However, there was no corresponding drop in the number of subsequent DUIs for first-time offenders.  This seems to indicate that the devices are much more effective in the case of repeat DUI offenders, and strongly backs the idea that the devices should only be mandated for repeat DUI offenders driving on a suspended license.

There's plenty of time to prove California DUI lawyers right.  The program will run for five years, and it'll only be then that we will know for sure, whether mandating ignition interlock devices in all first-time DUI offenders’ vehicles actually reduces recidivism rates.

If the Huntington Beach Police Department has its way, motorists suspected of drunk driving could soon have their names plastered on the agency's website.  It's a “name and shame” tactic that's been used by police departments elsewhere in the country, and it’s very familiar to Los Angeles DUI attorneys. 

According to the Huntington Beach Police Department, drunk driving is a major problem in the city, and posting the names of DUI suspects is how they plan to deal with it.  Representatives of the HBPD go to great lengths to explain how this tactic will be nothing like a “wall of shame.”  All they want to do, they say, is to raise public awareness about the problem.

They don't explain why creating awareness of drunk driving should involve publicizing the names of people who may be completely innocent of DUI.  The names that will be posted on the police department website, if this insane proposal goes ahead, will only be of DUI suspects, not convicts.  In this country, we continue to assume that persons are innocent until proven guilty. 

For someone who is acquitted of DUI charges, the damage may have already begun if his name is posted on the website.  That posting can show up on search engine rankings.  Consider the case of a man who has applied for a job, and his employer does a Google search for his name, a common practice these days.  The police department website ranking containing his name and a bogus DUI charge, could possibly come up during the search.  Such tactics can have a profound effect on a person's employment and relationships.

Several police department and law enforcement personnel around the country have also experimented with such name and shame tactics.  Earlier this year, a prosecutor in Texas decided to name local DUI suspects on his Twitter feed.  These are shameful tactics that Los Angeles DUI lawyers strongly object to.

Not many people have heard of drug courts.  With just about 2,300 of these courts in the country, California DWI lawyers can’t blame people for not being aware of these courts that offer supervised confinement and addiction treatment in lieu of prison time for drunk driving offenders. 

There's been a great deal of focus on DUI over the past 12 months.  Much of this has been due to the fact that there has been an endless stream of celebrities caught driving under the influence.  This month, Lindsay Lohan walked into jail in a highly publicized case arising from her DUI probation violations.  It’s the right time to make people in California aware of the fact that prison is not the best way to treat offenders convicted of intoxicated driving.

Persons who have been convicted of DUI offenses or drug offenses, can also be sent to special drug courts.  In these courts, the offenders are kept in treatment and under close supervision.  These persons are required to remain under supervision for a minimum period of one year.  During this period, they are provided with addiction treatment, and are regularly and randomly tested for drug and alcohol abuse.  Throughout the program, they have to report to the court about whether they have been able to meet their obligations to their families, to the court and to themselves.  Persons under the program are expected to turn up in court frequently for review of their progress.  Persons may be either rewarded for good progress under the program, or may be sanctioned if they don't meet the targeted goals.

There are various kinds of drug court models, and the validity criteria for these courts vary.  Most of the courts in the US are adult criminal drug courts and DWI courts.  Researchers have found that these courts substantially reduce the incidence of crime, and prove to be more cost effective in the long run, even though they're slightly more expensive in the beginning.  The cost effectiveness comes from the fact that there is no need for tedious judicial case processing and substantial investment of law enforcement efforts.  Instead, the person gets the treatment he needs and goes out back out into the world again, with a much lower chance of driving under the influence again.