TheAgitator.com
Law Enforcement and DWI
Monday, February 8th, 2010A quick roundup of recent stories on law enforcement officials and DWI laws…
- Ten police officers in Westchester County, New York admit to local newspaper that they routinely let other officers off after catching them driving drunk off duty.
- Off-duty, possibly drunk South Carolina officer pulled over after a chase demands “professional courtesy” she says is customarily granted to other officers. She was charged with reckless driving and disorderly conduct, but wasn’t arrested or given a breath test, and was allowed to go home.
- Chicago police officer shown to have faked dozens of DWI arrests won’t face criminal charges.
- Off-duty Massachusetts state police lieutenant crashes into pickup truck, causing the truck to flip several times. Officer admitted drinking earlier in the day and two open beer cans were found in his car. Other officers don’t administer field sobriety test for 2 1/2 hours, after allowing him to talk to his attorney. He was also never given breath or blood tests. He did get a $20 traffic ticket.
- From last year, DWI charges dropped against Nevada DA who caused two crashes within six hours while in California, and tested over the legal limit after the second. He was allowed to plead to reckless driving.
Ive noticed that ther have been thousands of false d.u.i.”s in the news.I assume there was never a reson to pull most of these people over in the first place.A easy way to remedy this is to enforce the 5th and 4th amendments in all traffic situations.I wonder how many innocents have been convicted ,after seeing the number of false arrests thar have been uncovered,
Notice the cops always refuse to take the breathalyzer test in the rare event they are asked to do so. Hmmmmmmm, I wonder why?
You know, “professional courtesy” is not just extended to cops. If you’re mayor or on the city council, you’re not too likely to be charged if you’re caught doing stuff like this either. So the very people who are in a position to correct the problem won’t because they themselves are beneficiaries of it.
Luckily, we live in the United States. In any other country this would be corruption and would likely erode public confidence in the state. In the U.S. everyone knows the cops are the good guys and those pick on them are the bad guys.
How is asking for “professional courtesy” not straight out corruption?
A drunk off duty cop near me in wisconsin decided to play grabass with some biker in a bar, he takes offense, she (the cop) tries to get her husband to beat up the biker. he pulls out a gun and shoots them both.
She is somehow a hero or something. She is from a town 30 miles from where this happened and was obviously going to drive home drunk.
http://www.truecrimereport.com/2009/12/andrew_wirth_kills_officer_jen.php
“Professional courtesy” definitely goes well beyond cops.
When I was a summer intern at a law firm, we had an end of the summer dinner at a restaurant in a nearby suburb. It was the summer interns and a bunch of partners, and just about everyone was drinking liberally. It was one of those “we spent HOW MUCH on wine?” business dinners. I was drinking Diet Cokes because I had driven, and I kept thinking “how are these people going to get home?”
At the end of the night, one of the partners handed out some business cards. They weren’t his firm cards, though: they were cards with the name and logo of the town we were eating in, with his name on it as the general counsel of the town. He very flippantly instructed everyone that he knows all of the police officers in this town and if anyone gets pulled over they should just drop his name and hand over his card. It was quite literally a get out of jail free card. I was genuinely shocked by how open this was, and how willing everyone was to just take the card and drive home.
I know people at this site are skeptical about DUI laws and their enforcement, but more than one of the people at this dinner had no business driving. I think the problem is that DUI law has changed some people’s analysis from “should I be driving?” to “will I get caught?”, and when someone has the feeling that they are untouchable they won’t even ask the first question and will get in the car.
There is no such thing as a good cop.
The whole DUI has become a scam from beginning to end.
It used to be .15 then .12 then .10 ; now even admitting you had
a glass of beer will get you in trouble.
It has little to do with impairment, despite the fact that
“Impairment” is the criterion.
Not to mention cops rubberstamp the evidence, strong odor
of alcohol, glazed eyes, same old lines.
What a perfect scam.
Special mention for the cop reading notes from the witness stand when independent recollection would be required for other crimes.
I agree it is a scam and DUI law is shot through with gross constitutional violations. Defense attorneys don’t talk about the “DUI exception to the constitution” for nothing. I liken DUI laws to domestic violence laws–society ignored both problems for decades, then overreacted in the extreme so that a lot of innocent people are getting caught up in the dragnets.
Another thread that seems to run through these stories,the cops accused have,in most cases,caused an accident or drove recklessly.As for the ‘civilians’ wrongfully aressted,none are charged with reckless driving.I would think that would be the reason to stop them in the first place,absent a accident
Not really related, I was a little creeped out Audi’s “Green Police” commercial last night. Partly because the idea of police conducting sting operations for choosing plastic, kicking down the door to look for incandescent bulbs, having roadblocks for emissions seems too realistic; and partly because we must take all these all showcased tactics for granted.
It’s stories like these that make me wonder what the Alexandria chief of police did to make the Arlington cops give him the DUI. He must have been a royal prick.
Same thing in New Zealand….
Whatever happened to that cop who created a false arrest on a lawyer’s wife because the lawyer went after the cop’s DUI arrest?
Mr Balko, by chance are you taking David Codrea pills?
I’m not complaining. :)
Yeah, Jennifer Luick became an hero alright.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=an%20hero
“Police officer Jennifer Luick and her boyfriend Gregg Peters were killed in Wisconsin after she pinched the wrong man in the butt”
Now THERE’S the caption you don’t want on your last picture in the paper ever.
shit like this makes me want a beer…
If you read the Wisconsin story, the first telling is that bad boy biker can’t take a joke and kills people. The follow up significantly modifies it.
Now its off duty lady cop goes into a biker bar, pinches bum, biker glares, boyfriend escalates, biker waves gun, feels threatened, kills people, who turn out to be cops. Its like a bad SWAT raid, except in a social setting.
Police think that they can do no wrong
Invade a person’s privacy
Person objects
Police up the ante, without identifying themselves as police
Person shoots police
Person gets blamed, police are heroes.
Its an unfortunate story, but I really hope the biker gets off.
[...] 8, 2010 · Leave a Comment Radley Balko’s criminal law post today, Law Enforcement and DWI , provides a roundup of a national hall of shame on this unsurprising topic of police and their own [...]
[...] post: Law Enforcement and DWI | The Agitator Tags: agitator, dui, even-ask, feeling, get-caught, problem, some-people, the-feeling, the-first, [...]
I repeat my previous statement. Cops are scumbags.
As to the Wisconsin story, as wise old biker myself, take heed, don’t fuck with real scooter folks. Learn the difference between your average weekend warrior Harley rider and bikers. Don’t fuck with the bikers. We don’t fight fair.
Whether you fight fair or not is beside the point: its whether someone started the fight with you.
Apparently the deceased boyfriend had previous court appearances for domestic violence and was known to be a bit of a dick. Sounds like the sort of person with a short fuse.
From the Westchester County article, spoken by the local MADD chapter president, Carol Sears…… “These are the people who are supposed to be protecting all of us,” she said. “We put our trust in them to keep drunk drivers off the road, and it turns out that when they’re the drunk drivers, they’re being protected by other police officers.”
A little late to the party, I’m afraid. Maybe now she might be more skeptical of the number of DWI arrests these cops make and the methods they use to get them…..in order to make things look good and to win “Supercop of the Year” awards from organizations like hers. She might, and monkeys might fly out of my butt!