Drunk judge gets away with dui

I'm completely against drinking and driving but if he had pulled over onto the shoulder and put on his hazards to sleep it off before the cops even showed up, I can appreciate his taking the right steps. Still shouldn't be a judge anymore though.

That's not taking the right steps. That's still drunk driving, you had to get to the side of the road somehow.
 
That's not taking the right steps. That's still drunk driving, you had to get to the side of the road somehow.

You can drink and drive below the legal limit. And the number of drinks requires changes based on bodyweight and how long since the last drink.

So, someone can get the behind wheel after drinking and still be within the bounds of the law. If that person still feels that they are impaired, it is the right step to pull off the road so as not to continue endangering other drivers.
 
This is why most cops really hate doing dui arrests. There are so many steps and little areas where the officers get challenged on every aspect. It does not matter if you have a black and white number That shows they they are way over the legal limit, if the officer does not ask them when they last ate, for example, you lose the case. The laws are set up by lawyers and designed so that expensive dui lawyers can beat the case every time. It is a racket.

As a LEO, have you seen a drop in drunk driving fatalities since checkstops came into play?

They have checkstops here, I drive through them all the time when I'm working and some nights they have like 20+ people in the bus.
 
I'm completely against drinking and driving but if he had pulled over onto the shoulder and put on his hazards to sleep it off before the cops even showed up, I can appreciate his taking the right steps. Still shouldn't be a judge anymore though.

It would still show he was drinking and driving to have gotten to his spot on the road...
 
You can drink and drive below the legal limit. And the number of drinks requires changes based on bodyweight and how long since the last drink.

So, someone can get the behind wheel after drinking and still be within the bounds of the law. If that person still feels that they are impaired, it is the right step to pull off the road so as not to continue endangering other drivers.

That dude was clearly wasted just from the audio. Come on...
 
That dude was clearly wasted just from the audio. Come on...

Yes. I never said that he wasn't. I said that pulling over instead of continuing to drive was the right thing to do, considering that he had clearly already gotten behind the wheel. Obviously, the ideal solution would have been to not start driving at all. But that ship had sailed so he made the best decision available to him at that point - curtailing his behavior instead of continuing to drive while impaired.
 
As a LEO, have you seen a drop in drunk driving fatalities since checkstops came into play?

They have checkstops here, I drive through them all the time when I'm working and some nights they have like 20+ people in the bus.

Nationwide, it does have an effect according to the numbers. In bigger cities where they have dozens of officers able to work the checkpoints and patrols, they can rack up arrests.


We do not do many checkpoints because the officers do not want to work them. Getting a dui arrest is like a punishment because of all the stupid steps you have to go through. Like i said, the process was designed to be beaten by an attorney, and no cop likes to lose in court.
 
The one who wrote the book around here charges 15,000 for a dui case in his county. 16 for the county next door. I took his class.. Wish I remembered all I learned lol

Like i said in another post, the process is designed to be able to be beaten by an attorney. The cops that do a lot of duis are obviously better at it and are able to avoid the pitfalls.

It should be like all other arrests. You have your probable cause for the arrest, odor of an alcoholic beverage, slurred speech, unsteady on their feet, etc. then you have the test results. If the bac is over the limit, it should be a no brainer. But you have to watch them for twenty minutes before the test, ask them a bunch of questions, do field sobriety tests, and a few other steps. It is ridiculous. Then in court, it’s a bunch of word games from the attorney.
 
You can drink and drive below the legal limit. And the number of drinks requires changes based on bodyweight and how long since the last drink.

So, someone can get the behind wheel after drinking and still be within the bounds of the law. If that person still feels that they are impaired, it is the right step to pull off the road so as not to continue endangering other drivers.

Right, I get that. But cursing and being belligerent on the part of the judge leads me to believe that wasn't the case here.
 
Law enforcement needs to be held to a higher standard and this judge should be made an example of.
 
Law enforcement needs to be held to a higher standard and this judge should be made an example of.
They don't need to be held to a higher standard, just the same standard would be fine with me.
 
Like i said in another post, the process is designed to be able to be beaten by an attorney. The cops that do a lot of duis are obviously better at it and are able to avoid the pitfalls.

It should be like all other arrests. You have your probable cause for the arrest, odor of an alcoholic beverage, slurred speech, unsteady on their feet, etc. then you have the test results. If the bac is over the limit, it should be a no brainer. But you have to watch them for twenty minutes before the test, ask them a bunch of questions, do field sobriety tests, and a few other steps. It is ridiculous. Then in court, it’s a bunch of word games from the attorney.

The games at trial come from the technology. The "datamaster" and the training required to understand how it works; most cops don't have it. If it's a blood draw, then the process required for safe handling is fairly detailed and often either not completely followed, or remembered. The lawyers who specialize, who are the best, visit the factory where the datamasters are made, and befriend the company. It's pretty interesting. I learned how the gas spectrometry worked in detecting alcohol and all that jazz. I'll have to go over those notes again.
 
Right, I get that. But cursing and being belligerent on the part of the judge leads me to believe that wasn't the case here.

I didn't say it was the case. What I said is that I'm glad that after being on the road and realizing that he was too impaired to continue, he pulled off the road of his own volition and chose to sleep it off. The cops approached him after he'd already done the best thing he could do (other than never getting behind the wheel in the 1st place).

His berating the cops doesn't change anything. He was drunk. Drunk people are belligerent. However in this case, he wasn't driving. He had already pulled over long before the cops were even aware that he and his car were out there.

I also said is that he shouldn't be a judge because the best decision would have been to never get behind the wheel in the 1st place. But that said, I prefer that someone realizes their own impairment and stops driving over someone who says "Sure, I'm not 100% but I think I can make it home safely." I'm much happier with him sleeping it off on the side of the road than I am with him putting more people in danger. That a drunk guy is an asshole is pretty low on the list of things I think matter here.
 
I didn't say it was the case. What I said is that I'm glad that after being on the road and realizing that he was too impaired to continue, he pulled off the road of his own volition and chose to sleep it off. The cops approached him after he'd already done the best thing he could do (other than never getting behind the wheel in the 1st place).

His berating the cops doesn't change anything. He was drunk. Drunk people are belligerent. However in this case, he wasn't driving. He had already pulled over long before the cops were even aware that he and his car were out there.

I also said is that he shouldn't be a judge because the best decision would have been to never get behind the wheel in the 1st place. But that said, I prefer that someone realizes their own impairment and stops driving over someone who says "Sure, I'm not 100% but I think I can make it home safely." I'm much happier with him sleeping it off on the side of the road than I am with him putting more people in danger. That a drunk guy is an asshole is pretty low on the list of things I think matter here.

What you said was that you could "appreciate his taking the right steps."

I simply disagreed in the classification of what he did, what he did was make one good decision in a night most likely filled with bad ones.

Not driving drunk in the first place would've been the right step.
 
They don't need to be held to a higher standard, just the same standard would be fine with me.

Yup. The higher standard thing is just something people say to justify bitching about cops when they do stuff that everyone else does.
 
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