Give a break for a DUI? What do you think?

[eyeeatingfish]

A recent experience at work has made the people I work with not real happy with me at the time. For those who don't know I work in law enforcement at night.
DUIs are pretty common and I try to get one arrest a week. It is good all around because I take a dangerous person off the road, the bosses are happy showing that we get stuff done, and the court overtime money helps give me spending money.

I had one the other night and I knew that it probably was not going to be pretty for me because he works at a restaurant where I work. The restaurant is the only place to sit down and eat at night and they give us 1/2 off. Per policy we are not supposed to accept discounts and gifts but most take the discount anyway.

So I make the decision to arrest him anyway because he was driving drunk and speeding 52 in a 25 zome. He was not borderline drunk either. He was cooperative and polite. Well since cops have to be the worst gossipers everyone knows pretty darn fast and the reactions range from loud anger to people muttering comment such as a sarcastic "thanks"

They all reason that I could have given him a warning and made him call someone to come get him, that there are other fish in the sea, etc. But to me it is more than that, or at least that is how I reason it. I will give a speeder a warning but I don't like to let a DUI driver off with a warning. How do I justify me letting this guy go while the next guy gets no such chance because he doesn't work somewhere that givs us discount? How does this guy learn his lesson? What if he drives drunk the next day and kills someone?
I accept not being able to eat certain places as part of my job and a discount is a priveledge, if it stops then I should be grateful that I had it this long not complain that it ended.

Yeah I could have let him go but it does not feel just. It is probably not the type of thing you think of when you hear about governent corruption but realistically how is it not? This guy gets away with a crime because he gives us a discount. On the other hand everyone is affraid that someone will spit in their food and they feel we should give the worker a favor since we got the cheap food.

I even explained to the sgt and he told me that maybe this area is not for me. Yeah I am young and still idealistic but to me it just is not right. But if it came to a cop's wife I almost garuntee would not arrest unless I had to. I admit that somewhere I end up drawing the line with a double standard but I don't think I have the balls to arrest a coworkers wife.

So what do you guys think?

EDIT: I wanted to add that I had decided there were times I would be ok with letting DUI drivers off with a warning. The instance would be when work is very busy, we are short handed, and arresting the suspect would cause my partners danger as they would have no back up if they got into trouble.

 

[Esav Benyamin]

I think this should be in Community Center rather than Current Events.

 

[JGON]

So what do you guys think?

I've had one, so I know how much it can suck, but it doesn't matter. 52 in a 25 while intoxicated deserves a DUI, no excuses, no matter who you are.

You did the right thing, and as a cop, you should continue to do so. It's good that you have ethics and morals and are comfortable giving a break now and then, but that guy deserved it.

 

[chogue1980]

I too am an officer and I dont ever let a DWI walk. I dont care who it is, and I have arrested the wife of the Mayor and the county attorney. Now I have had people that are polite and cooperate pass my FST (HGN, walk and turn, one foot count) then go right at .08 on my PBT. Usually at that point I will give them the opportunity to call a cab or find another ride. Main reason is by the time i drive 20-30min to the station, then observe them for the required time limity almost an hour has passed and they are going down in blood/Alc %

 

[powernoodle]

Drunk drivers kill innocent people, and our current laws do almost nothing to dissuade recidivism. Every drunk driver should be arrested. Every time.

When I rule the world, first time drunk drivers will receive enough prison time to dissuade 90% of them from a second offense. There is no rational basis for allowing a drunk to risk the lives of innocent human being.

 

[philwar]

I HATE people who drink and drive. You did good in my book. :thumbup:

 

[JUST1MOR]

My brother is a trooper in Alabama, so you know what my opinion will be. If he was DUI, DWI, etc., then he should be in the back of your patrol car. Look at the other side of the coin, could you live with yourself if you had let this slide and he killed someone? Thankfully, you pulled him over before anything could have. This was right, & if it is any help to you, I know my brother would have done the same.

 

[sunnyd]

I am no fan of folks driving drunk! But what I find interesting is that first and foremost in your OP you describe how arresting drunk drivers makes you extra coin which seems to be the overall theme here.

Oh, and just so you know I voted to give the guy a break and just call for a ride to get him home safe. Based on everything you described in this situation that is what I would have done. I used to work as a LEO back in the 1980's and I did this on occasion and it scared more than a few completely sober. Its called Police Discretion.


Anthony

 

[richard thurman]

When I was 17 I joined the us army reserves. That lasted about a year so I went full time and got sent over to Germany. State side I could drink about 8 beers and still stumble around. When I got over to Germany I have 1 1/2 pints of there beer and could not get out of the ditch that I feel in. When I left Germany I could drink a case of there beer (they have liters not 12 oz bottles) and pass any test you can give me except the breath test. At fort hood Texas I started looking around and I saw every one that was a heavy drinker getting dui's. I got really scared and stop drinking over night. I don’t need a dui on my licenses.
Here in fl I will not drink if I am even going to think about driving of If I am at home then I will have a couple. Besides that I just don’t drink. I will just stick with ma ice tea.

 

[mete]

I knew a kid , 13, who was killed by a drunk driver. Give the driver another chance ? That's what they call an enabler !!

 

[dericdesmond]

I think they give/gave discounts to the rule breaking cops in order to draw them in just so they could spit in their food. Though the cops are breaking rules, I would never do something like that however I wouldnt judge someone else who did.

But yeah, you did the right thing.

 

[MikeH]

I and my 26 year old daughter who will always walk unsteadily, have problems getting choked while eating, slur her speech and have a very poor short-term memory due to massive head inuries from a hit and run say never, ever, let a DUI off the hook.

 

[bush-haus]

Great job man..you did the right thing. I am the brother and son of Police Officers. I understand the extra jobs and money from court. It's good money. I also understand that money is NOT the reason why you arrested him! You became an officer for a few reasons, one being you wanted to be on the right side of the law. You didn't create the law, but you DO enforce it.
Above, the phrase "police discretion" was used. They are very right as it is used all the time for situations NOT involving life threatening predicaments. It would have haunted you until the day that you die if you would have let him go JUST so you can have a comfortable place to sit and eat (for half off) and he killed someone.
This is why PD's make such policies such as DO NOT TAKE FREE OR DICOUNTED FOOD. This practice is to keep the cops around to secure the area and as a bit of a bribe to the officers.
Taking this discount made you question your job, and has jaded your entire department including your SGT. If this driver would have hurt or killed another driver, you and the entire department would have been under fire as the media LOVES to belittle it's local PD. Take this as a lesson, don't take the discounts. It will make scenarios like this much easier to deal with!
Ron

 

[kingsqueak]

Get out of police work ;-).

It's not about doing the right thing, it's about fitting in with the system.

If you go in with the intent of doing the right thing, you will not make many friends, nor make rank in most departments. Simple anecdote , they won't politically permit the officers here to write tickets for things like crossing center lines or to force a re-test with elderly and unsafe drivers unless an accident has occurred. The guys who write these tickets are stuck as life long corporals doing traffic detail.

Most of the mission is revenue collection and the politics push for the shortest path methods. Things that require trials are expensive and only tolerated if they are a political favorite (DWI as a big example).

I intensely dislike DWI from being an EMT and seeing the carnage, but there is the 'code' for officers, family and friends where unless you have real destruction, you have to let them go.....or suffer as a result.

That half off discount is protection money. At the very least you shouldn't eat there anymore as the guy is paying you for something you didn't deliver ;-).

This is why I walked away from it all years ago. The system has made it very little about helping and protecting people.

Talking suburbia here btw, you city guys have my respect, that's a whole other mess.

 

[PropThePolecat]

You did the right thing, it has nothing to do with you being young and idealistic. I can give you many examples on innocent people getting killed, because of a drunk driver thinking he could handle driving under influence. There should be zero tolerance when dealing with those sort of people.

Just imagine, if you had let him off the hook and he had collided with somebody in the next intersection...What do you think your colleagues would have said? And do you really think he would have learned a lesson, if you had let him off the hook?

Your colleagues should back you up, but it sounds as if the ethics and morale of your particular department isnt the highest out there. Stick to your principles, in the end its all you got.

 

[Danbo]

Drunk drivers should be fisted by a large horny gorilla. Drunk drivers deserve NO breaks; they kill innocent people.

 

[stealthchaser13]

You did the right thing. I don't care that the guy was speeding 52 in a 25 (keep reading you'll understand). The guy was DWI. Thats all you need to arrest the (insert expletive here). The speeding, thats just another charge to add.

I recently had a friend killed , another almost, and a third person injured (all in the same crash), by a drunk driver. Imagine if you had let that person go, and he had killed a friend of yours. Or if you were the drunk, and you killed someone.

You did the right thing! Keep up the good work!

 

[otto]

"DUIs are pretty common and I try to get one arrest a week. It is good all around because I take a dangerous person off the road, the bosses are happy showing that we get stuff done, and the court overtime money helps give me spending money."
WTH is that all about? It sounds like you are more interested in the extra money and nuzzling up to your boss than the public safety. There should really be a way to weed folks with your mindset out before they give you a badge and a gun!


And you take the discount even though you know you should not?

I have no love for people that drive while impaired, whether it is alcohol, drugs, or on a phone. but you sound like you need to find a different line of work.

 

[KennyB]

Well, I'm a young man, and I don't have my mind made up about how strictly we need to enforce DUIs. On the one hand, the tragedy of other people being effected by someone who does not have the good judgment to know when to get a ride home should not be tolerated and should be punished severely, but on the other hand it seems that the methods we've put into work in order to try to deter this is susceptible to abuse by quota systems, profiling, or just selective enforcement based on how advantageous it will be to arrest the person for DUI or not. Something should be done about that, but that's all I'm going to say about that, because I think there's a bigger issue at hand which completely excludes any rationality for leniency, and that's that he was driving 52 miles an hour.

I mean, there is no safe speed for drunk driving, but I think there is a stark contrast between questions of granting leniency to someone who is driving okay but just happened to be DUI, and someone that is traveling at high rates of speed and presenting a compound danger.

At the end though, I do kind of think it's more important to remain strict and firm on DUI laws. The old phrase of, "If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile," comes to mind. If you give just a little bit of leniency because a guy isn't doing anything else wrong, you excuse the initial wrong-doing, and you set a precedence, that will just grow and grow until it's, "Well, we were just heading back from the restaurant," to, "Well, he gives us discounts." It's those kinds of over sights and lapses in enforcement that wind up getting people killed and injured by drunk drivers in my opinion, and to me trying to give someone leniency on something like that in order to protect a discount is not only inappropriate but heinous.

 

[nate1714]

DWI is not something to take lightly. If they were speeding that much then thats it, then maybe but DWI is never acceptable and to prove your case further you mentioned he was way over the limit so you did the right thing. People dont like when their friends are going through hard time. Do you know what. People dont like their friends dead from running into a tree or God forbid hitting another vehicle. Stay safe at night.