Larry Davis can be excused if he is a tad confused. Austin police pulled him over for running a red light. As we have seen before (and discussed in this column), police often use pretextual reasons to conduct drug or alcohol stops. In this case, police asked Davis to take a voluntary breath test and he consented and blew a 0.0. He also agreed to a blood sample and was later cleared of seven types of drugs. Negative on everything, but he was arrested and spent the night in jail under a bizarre “take-no-chances” policy which seems to boil down to “arrest them all and let God sort them out.”
This is not the first such case. In an earlier arrest, Biana Fuentes below a 0.08 – below the threshold but was still arrested. The cases are routinely dismissed but not after citizens have to spend the night in jail and secure lawyers. No officers have been reportedly disciplined. Indeed, they appear to be following this take-no-change policy that amounts to little more than blind arrests. Police insist that the officer had a reasonable suspicion that he was high on another drug like marijuana and did not want to take a chance. That is quite a standard. The driver voluntarily passes every test, but he is still arrested.
You may recall Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo from the recent story where he defended a controversial jaywalking arrest by noting that it was not so bad when women are being sexually assaulted by officers in other cities. Of course, under the take-no-chances policy, his department can simply arrested everyone on the sidewalk on the chance that they might have previously jaywalked (or are about to jaywalk). One can’t be too careful. After all, with no one on the streets, there can by definition be no jaywalking.
Source: WFAA
Very sad reading this article. My sons and I were seriously thinking of moving to Texas because of the crazies here in the East Coast. Now I’m a bit confounded, I guess the bigger cities in Texas as getting as bad as NYC, Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago etc.
what happened to Austin to lose its easy going status?
MONEY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=202o_JS7E04
Its all about tax revenue & funding the machine
too much of a good thing
Dog will not be mocked
we’ll be flushing w/ bottled water in a few short years
Good thing the DA is above reproach.
What is the definitive test for impaired police officers, impaired prosecutors, impaired defense attorneys, impaired judges, impaired defendants, impaired plaintiffs, impaired respondents, impaired jurors, impaired citizens, impaired legislators, impaired law professors, and impaired others?
Who, on earth or elsewhere, is absolutely and totally without any form of impairment whatsoever?
What if human society were to be structured to reasonably accommodate impaired people?
What living persons are without any form of disability? If there are none, then everyone is automatically qualified for reasonable accommodation in Americans with Disabilities Act ways?
Is human life itself a disability in the form of impairment?
In a society divided into groups of “Us” and “Them,” I have never yet met even one “Them.”
Yes, what happened to Austin to lose its easy going status that it had a couple of decades ago. The police might be the answer though that would be a guess without a precise why.
Austin used to seam like the only liberal oasis in the old Confederate states, They do a damn good job of keeping any & all legitimate progressives, DOWN
what, no colonoscopy?
I reviewed another recording on the internet of the field sobriety tests. Unfortunately most of the video had been edited so it did not give me enough to make a conclusion.
However what I did see in the video if those were the only tests the defendant had performed I don’t see sufficient evidence of impairment. The walk and turn test was performed satisfactorily. The one leg stand test only scored 1 failure (loses balance) The rest of the elements of this test he passed.
a .000 test on a breath test device means no impairment for alcohol consumption. The next step is to determine if the impairment is drug related. However, the officers at this point must articulate impairment as it is not presumptive at this stage. That is where the field sobriety tests and other observations become mandatory. From what I did see in the video (and I do wish it was complete) I personally would not have believed there was sufficient probable cause to make a DWI arrest and the driver should have went home with his car.
At least the soulless Dick Cheney had a 1% doctrine. These Austin cops have a 0% doctrine. Sadly, Americans have no one to blame but themselves for the increase in police state tactics. The people bought the Patriot Act fear hook, line and sinker. Americans were willing to pay ANY price for a perception of safety and they got more than they bargained for. And it won’t matter how many guns you have because police depts now have tanks, SWAT teams and chemical agents that will render your weapons useless. You now have your security and your security state…
Would this go down as a felony arrest on this kid’s record and be something he’d have to list on a future job app? Please tell me the answer is NO.