WSP trooper says he is never wrong! Huh, interesting...

Washington State Patrol Trooper Tony Brock puts a woman through field sobriety tests in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood. She was later arrested for DUI. (Photo: KIRO Radio/Brandi Kruse)

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listenListen: DUI limit really more of a guideline for state troopers

While roadways across Washington state are spotted with signs that remind drivers of the "legal limit," and warn "over the limit, under arrest," driving under the influence can often be a crime of opinion for troopers who believe you are too impaired to be behind the wheel. 97.3 KIRO-FM's Brandi Kruse reports.

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On a Friday night in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Trooper Tony Brock pulls a woman over for driving without headlights. As he approaches the vehicle, he detects a strong smell of alcohol.

The woman fumbles for her driver's license and struggles to unbuckle her seatbelt when Trooper Brock asks her to exit the truck.

"How much have you had to drink tonight?"

"Six beers," says the woman.

"Do you feel like you're OK to drive?"

"I do," she responds, telling him her last drink was 45 minutes ago.

Trooper Brock proceeds to put the woman through a series of field sobriety tests.

He moves his pointer finger side-to-side as she attempts to follow it with her eyes. He watches as she takes nine steps, carefully putting one foot in front of the other while counting the steps out loud. He asks her to recite her alphabet from the letter "b" to the letter "n," then asks her to count from 58 to 72.

Without blowing into a breathalyzer to determine her blood alcohol level, the woman is arrested for driving under the influence.

"Even if she was not over a .08, it's obvious she's affected by the alcohol she was drinking," said Trooper Brock. "Even if I took her back to the office and she blew a .07, she would still be being booked into the King County Jail for DUI."

While roadways across Washington state are spotted with signs that remind drivers of the "legal limit," and warn "over the limit, under arrest," driving under the influence can often be a crime of opinion for troopers who believe you are too impaired to be behind the wheel.

"I [couldn't] care less about what they blow; if they're below the legal limit, at the legal limit or five times the legal limit," said Trooper Brock, who is member of the Washington State Patrol's Target Zero Team. Their goal is to reduce deaths on the roadway.

"I don't worry about what's going to happen six months or a year down the road in court," he said. "I know when I go home every single shift that if I took someone off the road, I'm 100 percent positive they were not supposed to be driving a car."

Under state law, someone can be arrested for DUI if a trooper or officer determines they were "affected to an appreciable degree" by alcohol or drugs.

"We do get clients that come into this office that are dumfounded, for lack of a better term, as to why they're even sitting in our office if their blood alcohol level was below the legal limit," said William Kirk, a DUI defense attorney with Cowan Kirk Gaston.

He said the government has contributed to confusion with signs and slogans reinforcing the "legal limit."

In cases where a defendant's BAC was under the legal limit, the prosecution must rely on the testimony of the trooper or officer who made the arrest.

"The evidence that a person was impaired to an 'appreciable degree' will be based upon the trooper's opinion, and therefore it becomes a crime of opinion and the weight that a jury attaches to that opinion is critical to whether or not a conviction is obtained," said Kirk, who has never had a client convicted of DUI with a BAC under .08.

"I personally have never had that happen," he said. "But I have heard of it happening and I have heard of some very talented DUI lawyers having it happen to them, so it is possible."

While troopers like Tony Brock have the responsibly of proving such cases, he said he understands that not everyone he arrests will ultimately be convicted of DUI. Many plead to lesser crimes such as reckless driving or reckless endangerment to avoid trial.

Brandi Kruse, KIRO Radio Reporter

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Drug Recognition Experts (DREs) are far from "experts"...

The WSP knows which drugs you're on TV shows and movies have taught us how drunk drivers behave when an officer pulls them over. They stumble while trying to walk a straight line and struggle to touch their nose with their finger. What does a drugged driver - someone impaired by something other than alcohol - act like? There are about 200 officers in Washington, who are trained to know which drug a person is using, just by observing them. Washington State Patrol Sergeant Mark Crandall is Drug Recognition Expert and a DRE trainer. In his 20 years as a trooper he's seen thousands of people who use prescription or illegal drugs, then drive. Some of them are high on a combination of things. "I arrested a painter who was inside a closed container. After work he had a couple of beers and was driving home about 4 a.m. The beers mixed with the fumes, he was high as a kite. By the time I got him out of the car, I saw him starting to inhale fresh air and watched him become sober," Crandall says. Marijuana, Methamphetamine and Oxycodone are the top three drugs used by those who've been pulled over so far in 2012. "We find people who are using stuff off the shelf, the huffers, the recreational drug users who take something or a feeling, illegal drugs, the underground drugs, the heroin and meth," says Crandall. "When you ask what we're encountering, I always say what can you imagine? It can be anything." The blood alcohol limit for drunk driving is .08 percent in Washington. Officers can measure the BAC in a portable breath test that can be used at the roadside. But there isn't an equivalent relationship between drugs and impairment levels. Troopers don't have an on-the-spot test for suspected drugged drivers. A blood draw is needed, with results coming later from a lab. For the officer's safety and others, it's important to figure out pretty quickly what kind of drugged-up person they're dealing with. If a trooper suspects someone they've pulled over is on drugs, they can call for a DRE to analyze the driver. The expert runs through a 12 step process, observing things like muscle tone. "They can be really amped up and their muscles will be rigid and solid, or they'll be on heroin and they'll be loose and flaccid like Jello. We feel their arms, we have them make fists, and we feel their forearms, do they know the difference between flexing or not and can we see that," he says. Behavior is a give away. Someone on meth will be "agitated, fidgety and hyped up" because it's a stimulant. Someone taking PCB might act like they have human strength or become paranoid. Pupil dilation also tells them a lot. Ecstasy, cocaine, crack, meth, all dilate the eyes, which look totally black, barely any color shows. Heroin makes the pupils look like pin dots. DREs try to stay ahead of drug users by going online to figure out what people are using to get high and how the substance impacts their behavior. "As we're trying to prohibit people from driving impaired on the highway, they're actually writing about how to get their best high," says Crandall. "I visit those websites too, I look at it, I find it amazing what people will do to feel an effect or get high, to get an euphoric feeling or to make them sleep, or anything that effects their body." The average state patrol officer pulls over between 1,500 and 1,700 drivers a year. The DREs have a high batting average for knowing what drug someone is on, confirmed by blood tests. Seattle DUI Lawyer, Nate Webb's, response to this article: The "training" they go through teaches them that everyone who smokes pot has a "green" tongue and that aspirin is a drug! Take this article with a grain of salt. Interesting how the DRE in this article said the painter was "high as a kite" and sobered up in front of him, hilarious! Maybe he just thought he had something more than he did but since the driver really only had two beers (probably verified by a breath test well below the limit at the station), the DRE had to stretch and point to some "reasoning" to arrest. To sum up, DRE training is a joke, then these self-proclaimed "experts" testify that after 7 days of training, yes 7 days, their conclusions are the equivalent of an MD! If all it takes is 7 days to become an "expert," then I'm an expert in: pediatrics, psychology, oncology, advertising, dentistry, construction, tiger woods PGA tour '11, '12, lol...you get the picture.

By Nathan Webb

Celebrity Chef DUI...

Celebrity chef Cat Cora was cited for driving under the influence after a minor traffic incident in her hometown of Santa Barbara, Calif., local authorities confirmed to TODAY.com.
She is scheduled to be arraigned on July 26, and is being charged with one count of DUI and one count of driving with a blood-alcohol level of .08 or higher, Santa Barbara Sergeant Riley Harwood told TODAY.com.
Cora, 45, is best known for her role as an Iron Chef on the Food Network’s “Iron Chef America” and as the co-host of Bravo's “Around the World in 80 Plates.” Cora is raising four children with her longtime partner, Jennifer Cora.

 

On June 17, while returning from the Cold Spring Tavern in Santa Barbara after what she told police was an argument with her partner, she rear-ended another vehicle at 6:15 p.m. at a low speed in her 2007 Chevy Tahoe, Harwood said. No one suffered any injuries, but the female driver of the 2001 BMW 325i told officers who came to the scene that she believed Cora was intoxicated. Cora told police she had consumed three bottles of beer at the tavern.
Cora’s blood-alcohol level was determined to be .20 and .19 from two breath samples taken at the scene, according to the report. Cora also had a blood sample taken at Goleta Valley Hospital shortly afterward that measured her BAC at .19, more than twice the legal limit.
Cora was cited for DUI and taken to the Sobering Center in Santa Barbara, where non-violent, cooperative people are sent until they sober up and are released. She has no prior DUI citations in Santa Barbara.

14 DUIs...really????

BOISE -- There has been strong reaction to a story about a Boise man convicted of his 14th DUI. Many are asking, “How is it that someone with 14 DUIs is still behind the wheel?”
After two hours of deliberation on Tuesday, an Ada County jury found 55-year-old Terry Ash guilty of his 14th DUI.
Shelly Armstrong, the Ada County prosecutor handling the case, explained to us his history.
She said Ash's first DUI came 36 years ago in 1976. By 1993, he had eight DUIs. Each one of those were misdemeanors.
It was around that time, the mid 1990s, when DUI laws were changing.
In 1995, Ash received his first felony DUI. Armstrong says he was sent to a boot camp for DUI offenders.
In 1996, he got two more DUIs, one in Ada County and another one in Canyon County. The judge in Ada County sentenced Ash to five years in prison. He was eligible for parole after two years.
Canyon County sentenced him to five years in prison. He was eligible for parole after two and a half years. He served those terms concurrently for a total of two and a half years in prison. His probation for those DUIs ended in 2001.
In 2002, he got his 12th DUI, landing Ash in prison for another three years.
In 2005, Ash received his 13th DUI conviction, and spent five years in prison.
Ash’s 14th DUI happened on Sept. 4, 2011, when police arrested him for crashing his car near Kuna. Four hours after the crash, officers recorded his blood alcohol content at 0.13.
In all, Ash served roughly ten and a half years in prison for his last five DUIs.
Ash's attorney, Brian Boyle, says he is considering appeal options, but couldn't go into more details because of the appeal process.
We contacted prosecutors and attorneys, but no one would go on camera to explain how someone can get 14 DUIs.
Ash is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 22. Because of a repeat offender enhancement on the DUI charge, Ash faces up to life in prison for his latest DUI conviction.

Lost actor arrested for DUI...

Matthew Fox can't outfox the law.
The Lost star has been dinged with a DUI charge stemming from a boozy bust last week after being pulled over for a traffic violation in Bend, Ore., E! News has confirmed
Per the Deschutes County District Attorney's office, Fox was officially rung up yesterday on counts of driving under the influence of intoxicants and failure to carry or present a license, both misdemeanors.
The 45-year-old actor was pulled over on May 4 shortly after 2 a.m. after failing to drive within his lane and failing to use the appropriate signal. He was subsequently taken into custody after the officer determined that he was intoxicated.
He's set to be arraigned on June 7.

Former Washington State standout pitcher arrested for DUI issues apology...

Red Sox pitcher Bobby Jenks has apologized for ''distractions'' caused by his arrest in Florida on charges of driving under the influence.

“I am embarrassed by the situation and apologize to my teammates and to the Red Sox organization for any distractions I may have caused," Jenks said in a statement. "I still need to let the legal process run its course and until it does, I will not be able to make any further comment.”

Jenks said he will not comment further.
He was arrested Friday after a sheriff's deputy saw his SUV driving erratically in Fort Myers, Fla. Jenks was released on bail.
An arrest report says Jenks told the deputy he took ''too many muscle relaxers.'' The deputy said Jenks was shaking uncontrollably and had a difficult time speaking.
The report says Jenks also told the deputy he hit another car at a strip club. The deputy found some damage on his bumper.

DUI Laws expanded...

SEATTLE -- While legislators in Olympia haggled over ways to close the budget shortfall, they agreed on at least one thing, unanimously passing a bill cracking down on people driving under the influence.    "You can't always stop people from being, becoming impaired, but this is a way to stop them from getting behind the wheel and driving," said Amy Freedheim of the King County Prosecutor's Office.
The legislation expanded DUI laws to include huffing, the act of inhaling chemicals to get high. It would also make it tougher to fool an ignition Breathalyzer.
The new law could force offenders to pay for cameras that prove they're the ones taking the test instead of a sober friend or family member.
"The fixes the Legislature is doing strengthen our impaired driving laws, making our streets safer," Freedheim said.
Advocates for stronger DUI laws applaud the bill.
Fifteen-year-old Kelsey Parret was killed in 2010 while walking on the shoulder of a road in Pierce County. Court documents say the driver appeared drunk. The suspect pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide, and was sentenced to four years in prison.
"Your child is taken away forever, and he'll go to jail for two years. Doesn't seem fair," said Amy Glassburn, the victim's mother.
Parents and legislators hope these new laws will give him and other offenders pause before possibly re-offending.
"I'm glad that they're working on it, and that they're working so hard," said Glassburn.
Kelsey's parents think tougher sentencing guidelines are the next step to prevent DUIs, but say this new bill is driving home the point: drunk driving won't be taken lightly.
The new legislation has been delivered to the governor's office. The bill's supporters say she is expected to sign it.