No Refusal Weekend in Fort Worth and Tarrant County

In an increasingly aggressive effort to curtail drinking and driving, Tarrant County recently conducted another no refusal weekend. This has been the third no refusal weekend since thanksgiving. The policy has been a component of the County’s approach to DWI prevention for the last six years.

Persons suspected of driving while intoxicated who do not consent to a breath alcohol concentration (BAC) test will have a warrant issued to have their blood drawn. Police officers will contact an on-call judge to secure a warrant before taking suspects to a local hospital where blood will be drawn. Thanks to a grant from the Texas Dept. of Transportation to cover the increased costs associated with no refusal weekend, blood tests are now mandatory seven times during the year: Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, and during the Super Bowl.

The goal of no refusal weekend is to eliminate the driver’s ability to refuse. Normally, a proportion of drivers suspected of DWI decline to submit to a breath test. According to a 2008 study, Refusal of Intoxication Testing: A Report to Congress, refusal rates across the country averaged 22 percent—with rates varying wildly from 2.4 percent in Delaware to a shocking 81 percent in New Hampshire. Law enforcement has heavily invested in securing DWI prosecutions and obtaining a blood or a breath test that will that incriminate drivers suspected of DWI is a huge part of that.

Blood alcohol tests are crucial to prosecutors in determining how to proceed in a DWI case. Cases with scientific evidence—blood or breath test results—look more compelling to juries and lead to more guilty pleas and convictions. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 81 percent of misdemeanor DWI cases which were filed in Tarrant County had scientific evidence during the last fiscal year. In recent years, law enforcement and the district attorney’s office have focused on no refusal weekend to increase the percentage of chemical evidence in DWI prosecutions.