A recent report from the New Orleans Inspector General’s Office and MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driver) states that poor bookkeeping has kept more than 12,000 DWI cases open in the city dating back to the 1980’s.
It was found that booking and bail records submitted to traffic court from the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office weren’t properly organized which hampers on prosecutors ability to properly prosecute repeat offenders.
Beginning from the police officers making the DWI arrests, to the city attorneys prosecuting them, to traffic court judges who rarely bring the cases to trial and probation, where follow up on violators is never done. The report even states that, when tickets indicating a BAC reading of 0.15 or above, prosecutors crossed out the reading and wrote 0.149, altering the official record of the arrest and providing no rationale for the change.
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