Interviewer: Do police concentrate their efforts during the weekend?
Brian Sloan: It seems to be done pretty much every weekend. They really report it in the news on the holidays. Agencies are really out in force between late night hours and early morning hours, especially on the weekends, in an effort to find some reason to pull someone over and then do a DUI investigation.
Arizona courts have repeatedly upheld that it doesn’t matter the officer’s actual reason for wanting to pull someone over, all that matters is did the officer have reasonable suspicion that a traffic violation or a crime had occurred. This allows the officer to basically say,” I want to stop everyone and go into a DUI investigation, but I saw this person make a wide turn, so that gives me the legitimacy in pulling the person over.”
Will a DUI Arrest Be Public Knowledge?
Interviewer: Let’s say I’m arrested and I’m charged. I get stopped. I’m drinking. I get arrested and charged. How public will it be? Will work or my family or friends find out, or is it something that will be kept quiet?
If You Are charged with a Felony, the Information of Your Arrest Will Be Posted on the Sheriff Website
Brian Sloan: It kind of depends on what you’re arrested for. If you are arrested for a felony, it will be a lot more public, simply because when you’re arrested for a felony, very likely you’re going to be booked into Fourth Avenue Jail. You’re booking photo is going to be taken. Your information and your charges are going to be listed and that is all going to show up on the Sheriff’s website.
There are a few companies that will then take that information off the Sheriff’s website and put that on their own websites. So that if someone were to do a Google search of the person’s name, all these different images of booking photos are going to show up.
In m opinion, it’s a form of extortion, where basically these websites have made a business out of embarrassing people and hopefully embarrassing them to the point where they are willing to pay to take their picture down, because while it was on the Sheriff’s website, it only stays up there for three days.
But there’s these other websites that will take the photos from the Sheriff’s website, put it on their websites in an effort to embarrass the person. If the person pays $100 or whatever it is, they’re willing to take the photo down so the photo will not come up in a Google search.
Misdemeanor Charges Will Not Be Posted on the Website but the Information Is Available if Researched
When someone is arrested for a misdemeanor, they don’t tend to have a booking photo, at least not one that is going to be posted on the internet. If you search the name, if you go far enough in, you might be able to find that there is a pending case under that person’s name, but it depends on what court you’re in and who the arresting agency was.
Sometimes there are courts and arresting agencies that don’t participate in that system, and so it is possible that even if someone was arrested and convicted of a misdemeanor, that they may not ever show up on the internet.
