Cook County is not doing well with DWIs

It's bad when you have to tell the complainant, or their next of kin we can't prosecute because of a lack of evidence, no witnesses, etc. It's quite another when you screw up the evidence trail, like what is apparently happening here.

DUI paperwork mistakes allow thousands of drivers back on Illinois roads - Chicago Tribune

Bureaucratic mix-ups have let thousands of drunken drivers avoid mandatory license suspensions and stay on the roads, a Tribune investigation has found.

A Tribune review of state data found case after case across the Chicago area in which the arrests of these drivers — some with repeat DUIs — are not being logged into state computers to ensure their licenses are suspended. The failures come in a process that still relies on police filling out forms by hand and mailing them to the state, a process rife with human error that frustrates anti-DUI advocates.

"There are so many ways for things to get lost," said Cathy Stanley, with Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists. "Nothing is instantaneously done or efficiently done like it should be."

A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Jesse White, who administers the suspensions, said the office was disappointed at the Tribune's findings and worried "there are potentially dangerous drivers, who have violated the law, driving on our roadways."

State officials blame the breakdown on police failing to send reports. However, most departments contacted by the Tribune maintain that they drop the requisite paperwork in the mail and assume that the state has logged the suspensions. Officials said nobody had ever studied how many times the process failed.

The revelation offers one more gap in what is billed as a near-automatic punishment for being arrested for driving drunk. Last year, the Tribune found that some suburbs routinely let drivers keep their licenses, often in exchange for hefty fines. That prompted White to ask his traffic safety task force to study the issue.

The latest-discovered gap — from mistakes — appears widespread, from arrests in Chicago to the tiniest suburbs.

It is nearly impossible to determine the true number of mistakes because of how DUI data is kept. But an analysis of state data found more than 3,000 Chicago-area drivers' arrests since 2010 weren't logged.

In one county whose court data could be studied more deeply — DuPage — it appears that as many as one in 15 DUI defendants are not missing a day behind the wheel because of the bureaucratic breakdown.

Benefiting from the mix-ups are people like Ruben Reyes-Rodriguez, 36, of West Chicago. Records show the same department pulled him over twice in 2012 and both times failed to send the paperwork to the state for what were his third and fourth DUI arrests. It took over a year for him to lose his license, and only because one of the DUIs led to a conviction that sparked a separate license revocation...

In all honesty a suspended license does stop anyone from driving. It is simply a risk you take when you drive, hoping you don't get pulled over and if so, pray the cop will not run the license or actually arrest you.

But again, why is it so difficult to log the entry of a report and paperwork into a state database? Assuming this report is true (or accurate), you must say "Come on guys, it's the 2010s, you can do this..."