I am all for busting drunk drivers, but don’t make it a revenue game. One night years ago (on a Friday the 13th wouldn’t you know) I was driving home from a friend’s house in Oregon City. I had a a couple beers MUCH earlier in the evening and then switched to water. On the way home a car came hauling ass up behind me and then rode my ass aggressively until I was about a mile from home. Turns out it was a cop who then pulled me over for “touching the line” with my tire on a curve on Stafford Rd(!!??). He asked me if I had been drinking and I told him the truth. He then put me through the (truly inane) “sobriety tests” and then arbitrarily decided I was drunk (I most certainly was not. And why no portable breathalyzer???). The guy was a cheesedick from start to finish. He had to call a buddy for “back up”(????) and then couldn’t get the cuffs on (because he wasn’t doing it correctly) and had to ask his (clearly disgusted) buddy to do it (after claiming I was “struggling against” him). He then threw me in the back of the cruiser and (literally) hauled ass all the way back to Oregon City. The guy was driving WAY over the speed limit, all the while playing on his dash mounted computer. The moron was ALL over the road and when I commented on the irony of me being popped for DUI while he was acting in a far more unsafe manner (and that I was not buckled in) he got very pissy with me. When we got to the jail he couldn’t get the breathalyzer to work (despite the large sign next to the machine stating that their 2 way radios MUST be turned OFF before using the machine). The idiot was freaking out and asked another cop what was wrong. He too was clearly disgusted as he pointed out that the guy had his radio on. So we had to let the machine stabilize for another 20 minutes. In the end I blew 0.2. So they told me they’d finish processing me and turn me loose. They threw me in a very (VERY) crowded drunk tank (again, it was revenue night). They let me call my wife, who made the long drive at 3 am only to be told that I still needed to “sober up” before they’d release me. She then had to turn around, go home and come back 2 hours later. It was one on the most infuriating nights of my life and made it very clear that cops can do whatever the f**k they want with impunity. AND it cost me $400 in car retrieval fees. Had that cop been equipped with a mobile breathalyzer (and far, far better all around training than he apparently had) I’d have been on my way home quickly, $400 to the good and with a much better opinion of cops in general. And the dumbshit might have actually used his time to catch a driver or two who was actually impaired. And let’s face it.....if society was truly serious about cracking down on drunk driving of any kind, there’s be a fleet of patrol cars outside of every bar in America.....
