By Brooke A. Masters and Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 16, 2000 ; B01
The next time a police officer shines a flashlight in your face and starts asking
questions, your answers may be more revealing than you think.
Some area police officers are now armed with law enforcement's hottest new weapon
against drunken driving--the PAS III Sniffer, a hand-held alcohol-detection device
concealed in a flashlight.
Able to estimate blood-alcohol content based on just four seconds of conversation, the
technology takes the standard police sniff test to a more objective--and exact--level.
Studies suggest that it nabs 20 to 30 percent more drunk drivers at a sobriety
checkpoint than regular police procedures.
But what police and anti-drunken-driving groups see as a valuable tool, some civil
liberties groups view as a dangerous erosion of personal privacy. For the Sniffer,
unlike other field alcohol sensors, takes samples without the subject's knowledge or
consent.
"For many years, your privacy rights and the right of police to investigate was kept
in balance by the available technology. That balance has been destroyed," said Kent
Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia.
John W. Whitehead, director of the Rutherford Institute, said the device may violate
the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. "To catch a possible drunk
driver, do we throw the Constitution in the garbage can? I say no," he said. "It
assumes you're guilty. It reverses the standard of proof. Why are they sniffing you if
they don't think you're guilty? Next, they're going to be sniffing for cigarettes."
In the Washington area, Fairfax County police are the most extensive users of the
Sniffer. Last fall, they began using seven or eight of the $600 devices, mostly at
sobriety checkpoints, although some officers have tried them on regular patrol, Lt.
Dennis O'Neill said.
"So far they've worked really well," he said. "It eliminates having to stick your face
in the car to detect an odor of alcohol."
Virginia State Police are testing about 15 Sniffers at sobriety checkpoints across the
state. The de-vice's manufacturer, PAS Systems, said that both D.C. police and U.S.
Park Police are trying them. The Stafford County sheriff's office tried the Sniffers
about five years ago but decided not to buy them for budget reasons, said Sgt. Ray
Davis. Maryland State Police and suburban police departments in the state said they do
not use the devices.
PAS Systems, of Fredericksburg, Va., has sold several thousand of the devices to
police departments and school systems--for use in parking lots and at school
events--since it bought the patent in 1993, the company's president, Jarel Kelsey,
said.
Police and advocacy driving groups say the device, which also comes in a clipboard
version for daytime use, adds valuable precision to the difficult task of catching
drunk drivers.
According to a 1993 study conducted in Fairfax by the Insurance Institute of Highway
Safety, police checkpoints catch only 55 percent of drivers with blood-alcohol
contents of 0.10 percent. The legal limit for driving is 0.08 percent in Virginia and
the District, while Maryland has graduated penalties beginning at 0.07 percent.
When officers are equipped with passive alcohol sensors like the Sniffer, the drunk
driver detection rate rises to 71 percent, according to the study.
"People who were driving drunk were able to brace themselves up and have a 50-50
chance of getting through a checkpoint. That's what got us interested in the
technology," said Tim Hoyt, vice president of safety at Nationwide Insurance, which
has donated several hundred of the devices to police departments across the country.
Mike Green, executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving of Northern Virginia,
said his group is hoping to raise money to buy and donate Sniffers to area police
departments. The device "saves the police officer a lot of effort in trying to
determine whether an aroma is alcohol or mouthwash. From what I have seen, they are
very effective," Green said.
When an officer pushes a button on the device, it samples the air in front of and
around the subject and then estimates the blood-alcohol level. Results appear on a
colored bar--green for sober, red for drunk. The manufacturer suggests having the
subject state his name, address and date of birth to make sure the device gets a
steady stream of breath.
Police use them only to single out drivers for the more usual field sobriety
tests--walking a line, standing on one leg. If, based on the field test, the officer
determines that there is reason to arrest a driver, another, more exact test of
blood-alcohol content is performed.
Schools in the Chicago area use the device, and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage
Commission is using them at parties and bars where underage drinking is suspected.
There never has been a court challenge to the Sniffer, Kelsey said. He argues, and
some legal analysts agree, that the device would survive such a challenge because it
simply tests air after it has left the driver's body and the results are not
admissible as evidence of guilt in court.
In the end, University of Pennsylvania law Prof. Anita Allen-Castellito said,
publicity may help resolve the problem.
"What's troubling is that it is surreptitious," she said. "But once folks know that
flashlights are also alcohol sensors, it is better than police smelling you because it
is more objective."
Sniffing Out Drunk Drivers
Disguised as a flashlight, the PAS III Passive Alcohol Sensor is being used by the
Fairfax County Police Department as a preliminary screening tool to noninvasively test
blood alcohol levels.
How it works
Flashlight is held about five to seven inches from a subject's mouth.
The subject is asked to speak for five to 10 seconds (asked to give name, address,
date of birth).
A pump inside the flashlight's sensor draws a sample of the subject's exhaled breath
through a fuel cell.
The fuel cell generates a voltage in response to alcohol vapor.
A reading can be taken in four seconds; a color-coded display shows the approximate
blood-alcohol content (BAC) reading on the side of the flashlight.
NOTES: Test results are comparable to BAC measurements under controlled laboratory
conditions. Accuracy may vary in field use. The test results are not admissible in
court if a driver is prosecuted.
SOURCE: PAS Systems International
� 2000 The Washington Post Company
