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Sunday, February 2, 2014
By Michael Nichols
Categories: Michael J. Nichols, Drunk-Driving, OWI
It is probably the busiest night of the year for police cracking down on drunk and drugged driving in Michigan and throughout the entire country: Super Bowl Sunday. You can find targeted enforcement areas at the Michigan State Police link to the State of Michigan website: https://www.michigan.gov/msp. East Lansing's drunk driving attorney is Mike Nichols of the Nichols Law Firm. Nichols says, "the best thing you can do to avoid an arrest is stay off the road because on a night like tonight, the officers have no incentive to use their discretion. Grant money goes to put extra officers on the road and pay overtime wages. When an officer works a grant, he or she has to make a certain number of stops and arrests while on shift.
Nichols recently resolved a case that started last Super Bowl and took nearly a year for DUI charges to be dismissed. "We had to work extremely hard, stay extremely focused and the client took an extremely hard hit to the pocketbook but he avoided a DUI conviction," Nichols says. He adds - "the basis for the stop by the officer was speeding. The driver made the mistake of acknowledging that he consumed alcohol and the video from the officer's dash camera showed the officer made up his mind to arrest him almost immediately."
Nichols says that if the officer asks you to "rate" your level of intoxication - he is setting you up to fail. He says "only if you tell the officer you are not intoxicated at all and are perfectly sober will you answer that question the right way. It is probably best to just to remain silent and ask for counsel - that is your right."
Nichols is a resident of Meridian Township near his East Lansing law office. He will be presenting 2 times at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in February. He is author of the OWI Handbook for West Publishing. mnichols@nicholslaw.net