DWI STATS HAILED

Backing policy of seizing cars

CONFIDENT THE COUNTRY has found an effective deterrent to drunk driving,
Nassau County Executive Thomas Gulotta will reveal today the preliminary
results of its experiment with a Long Island sacrament: car ownership.

About three months after the county adopted a law that gave police the
authority to impound the vehicles of drivers arrested for driving while
intoxicated, 466 drivers have been separated from their cars and face the
possibility of losing them forever without being compensated monetarily.
The threat of such a substantial loss scares drivers into driving sober,
the logic goes.

To back it up, Nassau County will report today that drunk-driving arrests
and alcohol-related fatalities have been reduced. Between Feb. 23, when the
law was put into force, and May 20, 807 drivers were arrested. During the
same time period last year, 1,369 were arrested. In 1998, nine people died
in alcohol-related crashes between Feb. 23 and May 20; seven died this year
in that period.

The numbers have changed with no change in policing, Gulotta said. Arrests
result from routine patrols, calls to crash scenes and the work of special
police units that patrol areas near bars and nightclubs during hours when
alcohol is typically consumed. Nassau County police do not set up sobriety
checkpoints.

''There have been no significant changes in methodology,'' said county
spokesman Dave Vieser, ''so the numbers should provide a meaningful
comparison.''

If anything, Gulotta said, police are searching more intensely for drunk
drivers yet are finding fewer.

Comparable statistics for Suffolk County were not available yesterday, the
Suffolk Highway Patrol said. In Suffolk, police seize cars only if their
drivers have been convicted of drunk driving in the past five years. As a
result, Suffolk seizes far fewer cars because the majority of such arrests
are of first-timers.

However, it did report that between Feb. 26 and March 30, four cars had
been seized, out of 350 arrests. In the same period last year, police
arrested 551.

The Suffolk Police Department employs random sobriety checkpoints. Last
weekend, police arrested 10 at a checkpoint on Sunrise Highway in
Lindenhurst. Two weekends ago, police arrested four at a checkpoint on Lake
Shore Road in Lake Ronkonkoma. Suffolk police said their methods were not
altered to suit or offset the new policy, which has not had as large an
effect as in Nassau and New York City.

As applied in Nassau, even first-time offenders can lose their cars.
However, the car can be returned if it is rented or registered to someone
else, or if the driver is found to be impaired (a blood-alcohol reading
between .08 and .10 percent) rather than intoxicated (a reading of .10 or
higher). If drivers are acquitted, cars are returned. And in some cases,
convicted drivers may have their cars returned if the seizure causes an
extreme hardship to other members of the family. New York City's seizure
policy does not allow for any exceptions. About half the drivers arrested
in Nassau since Feb. 26 have had their vehicles returned.

''The intent was to take a tough stand against drunk driving,'' Gulotta
said, ''to have a strong policy, but a practical and reasonable one. This
policy is definitely saving lives.''

While the law has been applauded by citizens groups like Mothers Against
Drunk Driving, it has been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union
as overreaching and unduly harsh.

Nonetheless, the law has withstood its first legal challenge. A State
Supreme Court judge ruled last week that the New York City law was legal,
calling such seized cars instruments of a crime. The New York chapter of
the ACLU filed the challenge and plans to appeal. If the appeal is
successful, the Nassau County chapter plans to use the precedent to
challenge seizures in its county.

''The law has been improperly applied because the State Legislature
intended the law to be applied in felonies,'' said Barbara Bernstein,
executive director of the Nassau chapter. ''A first offender is not a
felony.''

Bernstein said her agency is collecting names of potential plaintiffs, all
of whom are first-time offenders who registered blood-alcohol readings only
slightly above the legal limit of .10 percent.

Attorney Vito Palmieri represented Edward Ferenczi, the first driver
arrested in Nassau under the seizure policy. Palmieri had a relatively
simple time resolving his client's case - Ferenczi pleaded to driving while
impaired and the car, which belonged to his mother, was returned - but the
law still troubles him.

''There are reasons for a law like this,'' Palmieri said, ''like for the
second offender, or someone who was really drunk.

''But as it is, the law is a little bit arbitrary and is not applied
justly,'' he said, pointing out that someone deprived of a $50,000 car and
someone who loses a $200 car suffer disparate losses for what may or may
not be the same crime.

''Nassau County has been trying to handle it appropriately,'' Palmieri
said, ''but the law itself needs to be reined in.''