By now most are familiar with no-refusal weekends. Taking their cue from case law, law enforcement agencies and prosecutor’s offices have put in place procedures on certain high-risk weekends to ensure that as much evidence as possible is gathered against anyone suspected of DWI. The procedure is now common, but still usually limited to those weekends when the resources are in place and on-call to get the required blood warrant from a magistrate in order to draw blood from an arrestee who refuses to give a breath or blood sample.
Now Harris County is expanding their program beyond special weekends, in fact, the program is expanded beyond weekends altogether. It is notable that the Houston Police Officer’s Union has mixed thoughts about the change in policy. While it, of course, supports the idea, it has misgivings as to the extent this policy shift will change how much time a given officer spends dealing solely with DWI. The police union is essentially saying that investigation into other kinds of crime is likely to suffer.