Broward DUI Lawyer Blog

The CMI Intoxilyzer-8000 was introduced into the Florida DUI enforcement landscape in March, 2006. This device replaced the the CMI Intoxilyzer 5000. The 5000 had been in use in Florida since the early 1980's. In fact, according to former Broward Sheriff's Office deputy sheriff David Fries, Broward County, and specifically, the Broward Sheriff'd Office and the Ft. Lauderale Police Department were one of the very first law enforcement agencies to purchase and use the Intoxilyzer 5000. In Miami-Dade during the the 1980's law enforcement was still using a hybrid of silica gel and gas chromatography to analyzed breath samples by using a method and device referred to as the "Indium Crimper."

In the early 1990's the Frlorida Department of Law Enforcement took over the Alcohol Testing Program for the State of Florida. The first task the department undertook was to bring uniformity to breath testing throughout the state. They did this by undertaking a complete overhaul of the Florida Administrative Code. The main change being to eliminate the use of any breath testing device other than the CMI Intoxilyzer 5000. The I-5000 became the standard for breath analysis fot the rest of the decade of the 90's and well into the 00's, as seen.

The Intoxilyzer 800 was introduced in orer to attempt to bring breath analysis into the 21st century. The new device is completely digital and is contimually connected to the internet so that analysis results and inspection results are immediately posted on the web and made public record.

I personally utilize the FDLE Intoxlyzer updates as a means to develope DUI breath case defenses. As a DUI defense lawyer in Miami-Dade, Ft Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and other jurisdictions it is extemely important to use the data provided by the FDLE.

DAVIE - The water is safe now. But people here are still afraid to drink it.
In two mobile home parks and an apartment complex, 5,500 residents buy their water from Ferncrest Utilities, a small private company.

Over nearly two decades, the water had high levels of chemicals linked to cancer and other ailments.

In April, after two years of warning letters, phone calls, consent agreements and a lawsuit against the company, the Broward County Health Department said the water now meets federal standards.

But customers, who have long complained about the color and odor, are not convinced the water is safe to drink.

"Nah, they sayin' that, but I don't believe it," said Herbert O'Rourke, an unemployed welder who lives in the Palma Nova Mobile Home Park.

"I don't trust any of [them]. Let them drink it," said Daniel Bilby, 50, an ironworker. "Let their kids drink it. I don't even give it to my cat."

For two years, residents received notices from Ferncrest telling them that the water had potentially harmful chemicals that may, over many years, lead to an "increased risk of getting cancer."

Some who drank it and bathed in it now wonder whether it affected their health.
At the Everglades Lakes Mobile Home Park, which caters to people 55 and older, Joan Robinson, who is in her 70s, has colon cancer. Her husband, 67, has throat cancer. Both smokers, they have lived there for 12 years.

The couple next door, ages 68 and 70, have non-Hodgkin lymphoma, chronic myeloid leukemia, prostate and skin cancer. They have lived there more than four years.
"Isn't it strange" that several neighbors "in a row here's got cancer?" said the lymphoma sufferer, Marlene Merrigan.

An 81-year-old woman next door to Merrigan died of cancer after living there for three years.

Continue reading "Water deemed safe, but residents still wary in Davie enclave" »