Georgia peace officers were very busy over the three-day Labor Day Weekend in 2025, recording over 24,000 law enforcement contacts statewide.
Most traffic citations were for seat belt violations, speeding, distracted driving, and DUI. Georgia State Troopers also responded to more than 280 crashes statewide, resulting in over 150 injuries and ten fatalities.
Local law enforcement agencies, including the Hall County Sheriff’s Office, DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office, and DeKalb County Police Department, reported five additional traffic-related deaths in four fatal crashes during the period.
Intensive Law Enforcement Actions
Seek and ye shall find. If you diligently look for something, you’ll probably find it. If you look for buried treasure, eventually you’ll find it. If you look for lawbreakers and traffic violators, you’ll find them. This bias often affects STEP campaigns DUI roadblocks, and other intensive law enforcement campaigns.
Intensive law enforcement campaigns, like a Labor Day crackdown, are very expensive. Generally, a federal government grant covers these expenses. In other words, the federal government is an investor. Investors like big returns, and in this case, the return is a high number of arrests.
As a result, officers often take shortcuts to pad their arrest totals. Later, when these cases go to court, a Marietta criminal defense lawyer turns these shortcuts into legal defenses.
Borderline-legal initial stops are par for the course in STEP campaigns. The law requires an evidence-based hunch (reasonable suspicion) in these situations. Frequently, officers get the car before the horse.
Assume Officer Nancy sees a vehicle that doesn’t look right, for whatever reason. She follows the vehicle until the driver exceeds the speed limit, detains the driver, finds drugs and makes an arrest.
Officer Nancy has a bad feeling about the driver and then obtained evidence to support her hunch. A hunch based on evidence is not reasonable suspicion. A hunch based on evidence is an illegal profiling stop.
Borderline-legal drunk driving investigations are common at DUI checkpoints. Frequently, when drivers act nervous at checkpoints, police officers assume they have something to hide and ask drivers to perform the one-leg-stand and other field sobriety tests.
Furtive (nervous) movements and behaviors at checkpoints do not constitute reasonable suspicion as a matter of law. Any subsequent event, like an arrest, is fruit from a poisonous tree.
Non-Moving Violations
Seat belt violations may be the most common non-moving violations. Others include parking infractions, document issues (e.g. an expired license), and vehicle equipment issues.
Non-moving violations often have minimal collateral consequences, such as higher insurance rates. Furthermore, these infractions are often non-point violations, or at most, one or two-point violations.
The minor nature of these cases often means that drivers don’t take them seriously. A deadline, like the deadline to complete a traffic school course or renew a license plate, passes. Judges are quick to issue bench warrants in these situations. There’s usually no second chance.
Usually, a Marietta criminal defense lawyer simply files paperwork and lifts the bench warrant. As a result, the driver gets the second chance to take care of the issue the court was unwilling to grant.
We should also note that most non-moving violations are not arrestable offenses. Therefore, peace officers cannot use a non-moving violation as a pretext to conduct a warrantless search.
Moving Violations
Speeding, turning illegally, and other moving violations are much different. Fines are higher and these infractions are usually three or four-point violations.
Speeding may be the most common moving violation. Officers believe these cases are easy to prove. If the driver doesn’t have a Marietta criminal defense lawyer, they are easy to prove. However, several defenses are available, usually depending on the enforcement method.
- Pacing: The least-scientific enforcement method is also the most legally reliable one. Pacing a car or truck is basically guessing its speed, usually based on the speed of a squad car. Most courts take police officers at their word in these situations.
- RADAR: A RADAR gun emits a cone of radio waves. The bounce back rate determines the speed of a target vehicle. Outside very close range, the “target” vehicle is difficult to pinpoint. The cone of radio waves expands and, after just a few feet, becomes almost as wide as a football field.
- LIDAR: Laser enforcement is the most reliable and least common enforcement method. An officer aims a beam of light at a license plate, conclusively establishing the vehicle’s identity and its speed.
Delay is a good defense in speeding and other moving violation matters. The police officer turnover rate is at an all-time high. Chances are, by the time a case goes to court, especially if it’s an old case that involves a bench warrant, the citing officer has left the force. No witness means no case.
Possible DUI Defenses
A DUI arrest has three phases: the initial stop, the DUI investigation, and the actual arrest. Defenses are available at each stage, especially during intense enforcement periods.
We discussed the initial stop above. Officers must have an evidence-based hunch to detain motorists. Nervous glances into a rearview mirror or leaving a bar late at night are hunches without evidence.
The next stage is field tests and (usually) a chemical test. DUI field tests, and the defenses thereto, include:
- Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus: The “follow my finger” eye test accurately spots nystagmus, a condition also known as lazy eye. But alcohol intoxication is not the only cause, or even the leading cause, of eye nystagmus.
- One-Leg Stand: When subjects stand on one leg, they look for intoxication clues, such as failure to follow directions and physical issues, such as swaying. People with even minor mobility impairments can’t stand on one leg.
- Walk-and-Turn: Like the OLS, the WAT (walking-a-straight-line test) is a divided attention tests that measures physical dexterity and mental acuity. Usually, subjects are mentally and physically fatigued at this stage, so they cannot possibly pass this test.
A breathalyzer, which is simply an updated version of a 1920s Drunk-o-Meter, has a number of scientific flaws, such as the inability to account for temperature variations. Blood test results are more accurate. However, blood test samples often have chain-of-custody issues.
There’s a big difference between an arrest and a conviction. For a free consultation with an experienced Marietta criminal defense attorney, contact The Phillips Law Firm, LLC. We routinely handle matters in Cobb County and nearby jurisdictions.
