DWI RULES TO CARJACK INNOCENTS

Rudolph Giuliani pulled his own version of Bill Clinton's wag the dog trick
yesterday.

With the national media fixated for the past two weeks on the police
killing of immigrant Amadou Diallo, Giuliani quieted the furor by solemnly
declaring war on a new menace.

At 12:01 a.m., the mayor deployed his army of 40,000 cops with orders to
arrest every drunken driver on the road and impound their cars as municipal
war booty.

Overnight, our city became the scene for the most radical drunken-driver
law in the country. The impounded cars, Giuliani vowed, will be kept by the
police or sold at auction unless the accused is acquitted of the
misdemeanor of driving while intoxicated, and even then the accused may
never see the car again.

But to get at the drunken drivers, Giuliani is declaring martial law on any
person behind the wheel.

There are, needless to say, a few major problems with this sledgehammer
approach.

"Where is the presumption of innocence?" asks Peter Gerstenzang, maybe the
country's top expert on DWI laws. Taking a person's car away while he or
she waits for a trial can be a worse punishment than the maximum penalty
under the law.

Under Giuliani's plan, Gerstenzang says, "We arrest them [drivers], execute
them and have the trial later."

Then there is the problem of who is playing the role of judge and jury.

If there is one crime the men and women of the NYPD know well, it is
driving while intoxicated. This is, after all, the department that gave us
the notorious Washington, D.C., Animal Farm a few years ago.

But don't take my word for it. Just look at the recent headlines. At 3 a.m.
on Feb. 9, Police Academy recruit Robert Dzubak was arrested on
drunken-driving charges after driving the wrong way onto a Harlem River
Drive exit and crashing head-on into an off-duty detective's car.

The next day, Officer James Whitaker of the 67th Precinct was arrested at
1:30 a.m. and charged with DWI at Linden Blvd. and Bedford Ave. in Brooklyn.

Drinking is so much a part of the culture of the NYPD that every precinct
in the city has a local watering hole just a stone's throw from the
stationhouse.

At the 17th Precinct in midtown Manhattan, it's called the Black Finn.
Right across the street from the 25th in East Harlem, there's Raggs. The
guys at the 68th in Brooklyn prefer the Salty Dog. At the 44th Precinct in
the Bronx, the outgoing shift heads for the Happy Corner Lounge. Even the
brass at 1 Police Plaza have their place with an appropriately official
name, the Metropolitan Improvement Company.

If Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir want quick results from
their drunken-driving offensive -- and if they have the guts -- they'd set
up 1 a.m. checkpoints near selected precinct watering holes.

Or they might order police to patrol the eastbound Long Island Expressway
near the Nassau County line or the northbound lanes of the Major Deegan at
the Westchester County line, looking for motorists weaving in and out of
traffic.

That's the only way they'll prove to a lot of people in this town that this
new policy is not just another tool to crack down on anyone who looks at a
cop the wrong way -- especially if he is black or Hispanic.

"What happens to the motorist who gets indignant because a cop stops him?"
asked Bronx defense lawyer Armando Montano. "The cop reacts and says,
'you're driving drunk' and takes away his license and car. A judge should
be making that decision, not a policeman or City Hall."

Meanwhile, combating this huge menace is sure to clog up the courts, if
nothing else.

Last year, 4,978 DWI cases were handled in the city's criminal courts, of
294,000 total misdemeanors. A grand total of 42 DWI cases went to trial,
with 25 convictions.

But Giuliani's plan insures, says attorney Martin Adelman, that hundreds
more people will be demanding trials in criminal court, since that may be
the only way to get their cars back.

"Where does all this wind up?" asks Norman Siegel, of the New York Civil
Liberties Union. "When you jaywalk, are they going to say next that your
shoes are an instrumentality of the crime?"