Recent statistics released for Cape May County indicate that Middle Township saw the most DWI cases than any other municipality in the county. Out of 477 drunken driving cases throughout the county, Middle Township had 82 cases — this translates to 17 percent of the entire county’s driving while intoxicated prosecutions.
As a New Jersey drunk driving defense attorney and former municipal prosecutor, I understand the techniques that the township’s attorneys typically use to secure a conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol. Based on the recent news article, Ocean City saw the most court cases overall, but lagged behind Middle Township by nearly three dozen DWI cases.
On a percentage basis, DWI cases accounted for less than one-half percent, while in Middle Township drunk driving accounted for just over two percent of all court cases. Although Upper, Lower and Dennis townships all had less DWI cases, the percentage of drunken driving prosecutions out of all cases exceed that of Middle Township.
Addition information from the county’s report included indictable criminal cases, disorderly persons and other criminal offenses. The traffic cases were broken down into DWI, moving violations and parking offenses. A total of 47,682 traffic cases were heard by county courts during all of 2009 – more than 80 percent of all cases in Cape May County.
More than 12,500 or 20 percent of all county cases were handled in Ocean City Municipal Court, due to its 1,468 criminal cases and particularly its many traffic violations 11,087. In fact, Ocean City’s meter maids wrote a county-leading 7,820 parking tickets.
The judiciary also released its Superior Court statistics on January 25. Those figures showed 7,351 total cases in Cape May County courts — 668 criminal, 3,912 civil and 2,771 family.
Ocean City’s Municipal Court Sees Most Cases in County, CapeMayCountyHerald.com, January 25, 2010