Centerfield

I think that's an egregious invasion of the constitutional right to be stupid. Though having regularly driven Dallas streets, I understand the motivation....

Posted by: Tully at March 23, 2006 01:24 PM

From what I have heard of this incident, some of the arrestees were hotel guests at the hotel bar too.

Posted by: Ike at March 23, 2006 01:27 PM

"There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they're intoxicated, other than get behind the wheel of a car," Beck said. "People walk out into traffic and get run over, people jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss."

That ranks right up with one of the most asinine things I've ever seen stated publicly. Since when is it the state's responsibility to regulate stupid things people do, drunk or not? Didn't Bob Saget make a career out of this sort of stuff?

Once you start regulating stupid things people do, how long before you regulate stupid people? Because if we're going down this path, I know a bunch of people who really are too dumb to do a lot of things they currently do.

Like Tully said though, having lived in Dallas for 8 years, I'm of the opinion that people can only become BETTER drivers after a beer or two. They certainly can't get any more dangerous or stupid.

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at March 23, 2006 01:31 PM

I trust our liberal activist courts will eventually resolve this issue correctly by siding with me and my drunken friends.

Posted by: WHQ at March 23, 2006 01:54 PM

From what I have heard of this incident, some of the arrestees were hotel guests at the hotel bar too.

Indeed beyond asininity. If a judge lets it all stand, and it passes appeal, time for a statutory makeover. Do Texas ABC agents really have nothing better to do? In Dallas? Aren't there still enough "club" counties in that area that they can go chasing people with the wrong membership crads, or minors, or something?

Scotch Drinker, I know whereof you speak. Dallas drivers make everyone else in the country look sane.

Posted by: Tully at March 23, 2006 02:53 PM

Dallas drivers make everyone else in the country look sane.

So you've never driven in the Boston area, I take it. Visitors speak of Boston with fear.

Posted by: bk at March 23, 2006 03:01 PM

I've been to Boston, and yeah, those roads are not for the weak of nerve. And I've been most everywhere else in America while behind the wheel of fairly large vehicles. I've lived in LA and Denver. Boston drivers may be crazy but they have some road skills. Dallas drivers are just plain suicidal, and not terribly skilled at all. Dallas freeways are murder, and that's not hyperbole. The 'burbs aren't too bad, but 635 and inward is intense, as are the Dallas/Ft Worth corridor and the split sections of 35 north from either city.

Houston drivers would probably be just as bad but the roads there are so congested they can't get up to critical speed. San Antonio drivers are, by comparison, fairly good. Though note what I'm comparing them to. Austin has somewhat better drivers but is terribly congested.

Posted by: Tully at March 23, 2006 03:26 PM

I've driven in both places, bk and while drivers in Boston are aggressive and scary, they are not insane. Drivers in Dallas are truly insane. No matter how close to the person in front you drive, you'll still get cut off. And then possibly shot. Because you tried to keep them from cutting you off. I think if the TABC was that worried about dangerous acts, they'd just have everyone toke up before getting behind the wheel. Life would be a lot better on the Dallas streets.

I'm trying to find other sources for the story, a friend says he heard it on the radio last week and that it was in Arlington.

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at March 23, 2006 03:28 PM

It's pretty silly, but, on the other hand, it's not unreasonable to suppose that a lot of those drunks are going to get in cars and endanger everyone else.

It's a pretty draconian way of enforcing (and probably the law itself is stupid), but your right to be drunk stops where my car fender begins.

And, frankly, having known someone whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver, I'm a little more favorably disposed to actions that would prevent drunks from driving. I don't think they should be arresting people inside the bar, but how about if the police looked for drunks getting in cars and arrested them before they could drive away? Or, perhaps, simply waited outside the bar?

And, I know Ike is being facetious, but there is no constitutional right to be stupid if that right ends up harming others. It's not as if the connection between drunkeness and vehicular homicide is something the cops made up.

Normally, I do hate the nanny state. But not if they are protecting me from some idiot that might kill me. You might as well say, why do the cops patrol neighborhoods where no crime is currently being committed? It's called prevention.

Posted by: Marc at March 23, 2006 03:35 PM

Chapter 49.02 of the Texas Penal Code states: "A person commits an offense if the person appears in a public place while intoxicated to the degree that the person may endanger the person or another."

Sales to Intoxicated Persons: Section 101.63 of the Alcoholic Beverage Code makes it a crime to sell alcoholic beverages to an intoxicated person. Bartenders and wait staff are legally obligated to look out for these signs of intoxication and to refuse to continue serving someone who appears to be intoxicated.

I'm pretty sure this would hold up in court. However, that doesn't make it any less nanny-ish. Also, if this did happen in hotel bars, it's even worse. If I'm a businessman staying at the Anatole, I'm pretty likely to have 4 martinis in the bar some night. That seems like a silly person to arrest. I haven't been able to confirm the hotel angle yet though.

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at March 23, 2006 03:47 PM

I wasn't being facetious, I was merely stating the fact (as I have heard it anyway) that some of those arrested were guests at a hotel patronizing the hotel bar, which means that most likely, the only place they'd be going after drinking is back up to their rooms.

I have no problem with trying to get drunk drivers off the road before they kill somebody, but I do have a problem with flat out assuming that somebody in a bar getting toasty is going to hop into their car intoxicated. Its a stupid assumption to make.

Had the Dallas officers instead kept an eye on the parking lot, or as I have heard of it happening in oklahoma, placing stickers on cars in the parking lot, alerting officers all over town that this car might be driven by a drunk, I'd have less of a problem with it.

But they didnt.

Posted by: Ike at March 23, 2006 04:00 PM

Oh, and my information about the hotel guests came from a report from NBC 5 in fort worth that was posted on another message board I frequent.

here is the
link

Posted by: Ike at March 23, 2006 04:13 PM

ok, for some reason, my link doesn't like to show up (anyone wanna give me some help on the markup code used here?)

so here is the raw url

http://www.nbc5i.com/news/8169246/detail.html

Posted by: Ike at March 23, 2006 04:14 PM

I think Marc was either talking about bk or me and accidentally put your name in his comment. Given my alcoholic screen name, that would be difficult but I'm guessing that he was referring to my original snarky comment. ;-)

That said, the more I think about this, the more I think it's a bad deal, hotel or not. I actually do have a friend that walks to a neighborhood bar. He doesn't go crazy drinking but he just figures it's safer to walk. Under this new policy, he's liable to get arrested. I just find that ridiculous.

Trying to defend this as protecting people from their own stupidity is silly. Monitoring people as they come out of the bar, I can sort of get behind though even that comes across as smelly to me. But proactively arresting people in a bar is REALLY stinky.

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at March 23, 2006 04:48 PM

I don't think they should be arresting people inside the bar, but how about if the police looked for drunks getting in cars and arrested them before they could drive away? Or, perhaps, simply waited outside the bar?

We do that here sometimes--pop 'em leaving the lot, or bust 'em for PI before they can open the car. You don't know that a bar drunk even HAS a car. But when they walk out the bar door, pull out their keys, and start fumbling at the lock, busting 'em is not only a public service, it's a service to them. A public intoxication ticket is a lot better than a DUI! Of course, busting a drunk driver actually behind the wheel is always justified.

But busting someone just for being drunk in a bar? When they're not creating any disturbance, and you have no idea that they're going to get behind the wheel? Not passin' the sniff test at this end. Hotel bars especially.

The usual tag here (when they're not behind a wheel, even if only because you stopped 'em from actually getting in the car) is to cite for PI, then give 'em a ride home or let 'em call someone to come and get 'em. The Texas thing just sounds plain petty and mean.

Posted by: Tully at March 23, 2006 04:57 PM

NOTE: Patent and trademark the Designated Driver and BailBond Service......

Posted by: Tully at March 23, 2006 05:10 PM

I'm with the majority on this one, and I'm a non-drinker! To me, this type of thing is far more dangerous to our civil liberties than the NSA listening in on Al Qaeda phone calls to the U.S. This actually does affect normal, every day people, and lots of them. And those people are being harassed not by really well educated, closely supervised federal agents, but by local cops. I love local cops, and most of them are decent people, but there's plenty of bad apples among them who carry out personal vendettas and get on power trips at the drop of a hat. Scary.

Posted by: PatHMV at March 23, 2006 05:35 PM

I know a lot of local cops myself, and what Pat said. They're generally great and good people, but that's throwing a heckuva lot of discretion in their hands for designated aggressive enforcement of what are technical fringe violations.

On other grounds: Is the Dallas crime rate so low that this is a good enforcement decision? Do Texas ABC agents really have so bloody little to do that they need to waste time and resources on this? You can toss a bar for bad ID's and other liquor code violations in fairly short order. Establishing drunkenness with probable cause from observation without aggressive confrontation implies a lotta time sitting there, identifying subjects and ticking off criteria. It suggests to me that they're overstaffed and/or poorly prioritized. And if they're doing through aggressive confrontation minus probable cause, it's downright reprehensible.

There's a major diff between citing bars for serving obvious runks, and busting people for being drunk in a bar. The first I can see, the second is pushing the lines.

Posted by: Tully at March 23, 2006 05:50 PM

Our crime rate is one of the highest in the country for a major metropolitan area and we're currently in a budget crunch because our city council gives away tax money to big time developers on a really regular basis so we can't hire more cops.

We're understaffed and we actually pay our cops less than the surrounding areas. This is leading to suburbs basically stealing cops from Dallas because the pay is so much better.

None of this makes sense to me. Somewhere, some bureaucrat decided this was a public good, something no one would think was a bad idea. I'm really surprised this hasn't been a bigger issue in the local media.

Wait, no I'm not.

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at March 23, 2006 06:08 PM

Well, these aren't really cops, they're Alcoholic Beverage Control officers. My experience with ABC cops is that they are often cop wanna-bes who are desparately looking for something relevant to do. They have to justify their existence (i.e., their budget) somehow. The highlight of their day may be successfully getting their ancient looking 19 year old undercover volunteer to buy booze from the 22 year old clerk at the corner convenience store without being carded.

Posted by: PatHMV at March 23, 2006 07:07 PM

You have GOT to be kidding me! I'm sure it's those Katrina refugees ;)

Posted by: JP at March 23, 2006 07:11 PM

Looks like the hotel angle was correct. Here's an article from the Dallas Morning News (free annoying reg req-Feel free to use mine un:brettspool-at-hotmail.com pw:116489)

Link

This is ridiculous.

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at March 24, 2006 01:06 AM

The thing that really worries me about this is that there's sort of an implied invitation to make the leap to conflating "too drunk to drive" with "too drunk to be in public."

If push came to shove in a court appeal, can cops cite someone for public drunkeness without verifiable proof of drunkenness. Probably yes, depending on how severe the penalty, so long as its a civil violation. Put suppose it comes to police blow-testing people in bars and on the street. In that case, what's the higher number allowable if not driving? Would you want to be the policeman who let someone go and didn't cite them for public drunkenness if they later had a drunken accident. A variance in the standards raises liability questions.

Posted by: bk at March 24, 2006 12:40 PM

I own a nightclub in Austin.
To me it is reasonable that some people argue for minimizing risk.
It is not reasonable to me that almost no one is willing to join together to protest when these good intentions begin to overreach and unreasonably limit civil liberties.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

Posted by: Paul in Austin at March 25, 2006 11:02 AM

Paul, why don't you invite us all to your nightclub for a get-together? I promise we'll spend at least SOME time talking about a Centrist PAC!

Posted by: PatHMV at March 27, 2006 01:51 PM