Rock Howard just testified at hearings in Texas concerning the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Commission, which has made headlines of late by raiding Texas bars and arresting patrons who fail to pass an alcohol breath test. At Stephen Gordon’s blog, he writes:

Not unsurprisingly these rookie agents were not concerned with building solid evidentiary cases and also readily ignored the operational guidelines established by the TABC. In fact many of the 2,200 SIP detainees will not be prosecutable. A number of sting victims are not only fighting the charges, but are also exploring various rights violations stemming from the arrests. The upshot is that the tab from this brief program could run into the tens or hundreds of millions.

Most outrageous is the “cowboy attitude” exhibited by TABC according to State Senator John Whitmire who co-chaired today’s hearings. He chastised TABC tactics including operations where agents dressed in SWAT uniforms and stormed targeted bars. Other committee members reported stories of patrons forced up against a wall en masse. Plenty of individuals testified about being arrested without a sobriety test or even, in one case, of being arrested after passing a Breathalyzer test. At one point TABC even stole a page from the BATF and invited local television camera crews to film their sting operations.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, let’s summarize: These alcohol control agents are dressing in SWAT gear to raid bars where people are drinking. Apologies for the overuse of italics. But sometimes, a little “what the fuck?” emphasis is in order.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 7:01 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Alcohol, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.