New Jersey DWI Lawyer Blog
As a New Jersey drunk driving lawyer, I constantly tell people who have been arrested for DWI or issued a summons for drunk driving or breath test refusal to retain the services of an experienced drunk driving defense lawyer. One of the most likely places to be pulled over for driving while intoxicated is a sobriety checkpoint, also known as a roadblock.
According to a news report, beginning tonight and running through Saturday morning the Monmouth County drunk driving task force, working together with New Jersey’s Highway Traffic Safety division, will be conducting a DWI checkpoint on the southbound side of Route 35 near Holmdel in Monmouth County. The roadblock will be set up to pull motorists over into the Dearborn Farms parking lot where members of the task force and officers from the Holmdel Police Department will determine drivers’ sobriety.
The checkpoint will be in operation from 11pm tonight until 3am Saturday morning.
Drivers who are stopped at roadblocks such as this are usually evaluated by a police officer using standardized field sobriety testing procedures. If a patrolman has reason to believe that a motorist is intoxicated behind the wheel, that officer may then request that the motorist undergo a breathalyzer test to ascertain the individual’s blood alcohol content (BAC).
Our law firm attempts to alert drivers to the existence of these kinds of checkpoints due to the heightened incidence of drunk driving in or around a particular locale. The is because New Jersey law states that police and other law enforcement agencies can only set up sobriety roadblocks in areas that have a statistically high percentage of drunk driving arrests.
DWI checkpoint being held in Holmdel this weekend, AAP.com, October 1, 2009