this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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Is that whole sobriety test thing real in the US? Like, stand on one leg and recite the alphabet etc? I've seen it on TV but always thought it was pretty stupid. In the UK the police have breath-tested for drink driving since 1967.
Depends. Smaller townships without regular access to a breathalyzer, yes. Or cops trying to get you to admit that you are intoxicated.
I walked a straight line while touching my nose because the cop smelled alcohol in the car (rightly so, my wife, then gf, was smashed). Took about 10 seconds for him to go "So obviously that's all her, have a good night!".
So yes, it does happen.
It's real, and it's totally based on the officer's gut feelings. Hell breathalyzers over analyze over 70% of the time.
To the point that the accuracy of breathalyzers has been challenged so many times in CA that it's to the point that if the cops in CA have you breathe into a machine and that machine returns a number that would constitute a DUI if that were your BAC then it's a DUI, regardless of what the machine actually does or whether the number in question is actually connected to your real BAC in any way.
Oh they do both. And you can get what they call a DWI (Driving While Impaired) just on the basis of the circus act in some states. So the breath test comes back at say, .037, which is well within the legal limit. The cop can charge you with DWI anyways based on your bad balance.
Forget the bad balance. All the cop has to put in his report is the language they were taught. The suspect had red, glassy eyes when I approached. They might as well drag and drop these statements or just have them written by LLM.
It's all really just an excuse by the popo to book you. Which is why you should always ask for the breathalyzer if you really weren't drinking.
Blood test, not breathalyzer.
https://dmcantor.com/blog/dui-breathalyzer-false-reading
Huh, didn't know in the field blood tests were a thing. Guess you learn something new everyday. I wonder if those tests are specifically for alcohol or if they also test a variety of other drugs like THC?
They aren't, but they are much more reliable than breathalyzer. Take the ride to the station or the hospital. A cab ride back to your car is cheaper than a DUI
Everyone should know that depending on your jurisdiction, refusal of the breathalyzer can result in automatic six month suspension of license. Regardless of results.
it's real, and it does work pretty well.
We also do the breathalyzer, or blood draws, but those are a little more involved, and if you can't do a field sobriety test then you definitely as hell can't drive a fucking car lmao.
So fuck anyone with mobility problems then huh?
you think those people are required to do them? One of the primary tests doesn't even require you to move. 50% of the other two are literally counting.
And like i said, you can just hit them with the blow test? Or blood like i mentioned, that's a particularly good one.
In some states refusing the circus act is an automatic DUI. Even if you ask for a blood test. We have the technology to just do away with it. And dyslexic people can drive just fine while fucking up the numbers and alphabet. It just needs to go.
that is pretty silly, though idk much about the specifics of it, really it should only mean you get arrested/detained, it shouldn't be possible to charge you with something that isnt proven.
It shouldn't. And yet it is. That's not even the worst use of that though. Cops can beat you up and arrest you for resisting arrest at any time. And that generally comes with jail time.
well i mean resisting arrest is quite literally illegal, so that would make sense, considering that if you're evading arrest, you probably have a reason to be doing so.
Though you also have to resist arrest for that one to happen. Otherwise it's unlawful use of force.
Sure. Technically. In reality they can literally just punch you and arrest you.
in reality they can roll up to you and tell you that you're under arrest, which means you have to comply legally. The actual proceedings of being arrested and charged take place later, so that's where that would be disputed.
If you were to resist, that's literally illegal. Therefore police have the right to use reasonable force against you (which is often defined as a proportion of your resistive force)
If you don't resist, and they do use force on you, there is almost definitely a case that you can hold against them for unreasonable force.
Mmhmm. Sure. And the second that cop gets on the stand and swears they did nothing wrong you're going to jail.
If the only charge is resisting arrest then it's a corrupt abuse of power on its face. What you're saying sounds reasonable as a thought experiment but in reality we have warrants for a reason. We have constitutional rules about due process explicitly because these powers were already abused.
Allowing police to just declare you're going to jail for a year is a massive fucking breach of our rights.
i mean, kind of? Like sometimes i'm sure it is. But fleeing in it of itself, is a crime. That's illegal. Maybe it should be legal, or highly contestable in court i suppose, but if fleeing wasn't illegal, you could just run from police, they can't stop you.
I mean yeah sure there's potential for abuse, that's why body cameras are a thing now. Every cruiser to my knowledge is fitted with a dashcam as well as a rear seat cam. It'd be pretty fucking hard to bullshit that one unless you're actually resisting. And by this point we're in a court of law and the only thing that matters here is what's proven, And even if they do lie, they can still get bit in the ass later because it's literally a fucking crime. (or at least, that should be the case.)
This happened fairly recently even.
They're not declaring that you're going to jail, they're stating that you're under arrest, which means that you are until dismissed, under the jurisdiction of the state, or specifically here, the officer arresting you.
Though to be clear here, if this is a thing that does happen, which i'm sure it does, yes that is a bad thing, and it is wrong, and it shouldn't be possible or legal. I'm just reiterating what the law is here. Even then literally all you have to do to not get hit with these charges is to comply. Which in most cases, super trivial.
In the case of a DUI here, in the event that you can't perform field sobriety, you're either brought back to the station where you can have a blood test done, which will demonstrate your sobriety pretty well. Like it's important to remember here that there are many factors to a DUI traffic stop specifically.
Usually you pull someone over for erratic driving (on account of being drunk) which is already, not legal to a degree. Usually they'll have some sort of alcohol on their breath (to be fair, you can just lie about this) generally there is an alcoholic beverage near them, empty or partially full. Having full unopened cans, as well as empty cans isn't in itself illegal to my knowledge. Signs of impairment, which SFST usually works to elaborate on. Breath testing, which inaccurate is another factor, and notably, blood draw.
We've seen similar cases to this before, there was a recent one where a kid got stopped due to a tagging issue on his car, insurance or something or other. Officer initiated a traffic stop, as is common practice, dude didn't know what the fuck was happening, and the officer was like "bro i think ur drunk" TL;DR he got pulled into the station, had his blood drawn, wasn't drunk, and then left. That officer was just a dumbass. (though to be clear here, i don't see anything saying he was jailed, just that he was arrested, not charged with any time or anything)
Are there problems with the system? Yeah probably, is there a good solution to this problem? Maybe. That's not my jurisdiction here. My point is there there are multiple places here where this issue gets caught, and fixed appropriately, and this does happen, routinely.
Well that's not true. Obviously the police can chase you and arrest you. We've already established they can place you under arrest at any time for any reason. Why does it matter if they get a workout first? Why is fleeing a crime in and of itself? Shouldn't the actual crime be the crime? Trying not to have your life exploded is just a human reaction. Burglary is a crime. Fleeing is human. Criminalizing humanity is just another way to abuse power.
Body Cameras are nice. When they're aimed correctly, or turned on, or even exist in that police department. But the problem remains that a police officer need do nothing but accuse you and rough you up. Even with a body camera that gets a conviction. Unsurprisingly 5 guys pretending to wrestle a 100 pound drug addict sells to a jury. Compliance does not matter. You can be the most compliant person in the world. They can accuse you of letting your body become dead weight. If you try to help them then you're actively resisting. Either way gets you face down with a taser in your ass.
And yeah the Brady list, for cops caught lying in court. A good district fires those cops. An average district just has a different cop go to court and lie for them, and a bad district just puts them on the stand anyways. I'm not sure what you thought the punishment was but for many police forces in the US the "punishment" is not having to put on your dress uniform to go to court anymore.
Having empty cans is "open containers" in every state I've lived in.
Your thought experiments are nice, but the police aren't acting in good faith. The laws and thought experiments assume police act in good faith and it's just not true.
probably because often times it involves fighting and physical resistance, and in a number of other instances dangerous actions that can potentially put other people in a position of harm.
If fleeing wasn't a crime, an officer could initiate a traffic stop, and you could just not stop. Theoretically you could also make a law that says "if initiating a traffic stop, the individual must also stop, otherwise they are illegally fleeing" oh wait, that sounds familiar.
This is like arguing that not paying your taxes on time is perfectly legal because you paid them after the fact.
yeah, and to my knowledge, most people normally try to do this by being a polite and cordial individual who doesn't intentionally cause problems.
i mean, fighting is also human, and so is freezing. And if we're getting to the level of criminalizing humanity. Than i could very argue that we shouldn't criminalize rape because rape is a distinctly human experience, and it's an abuse of power to wield that crime over someones head, for something as human as rape.
yeah, agreed, and these are all micro technicalities here. The sun is nice, until you get sunburnt, the road is nice, until you fall on it, and scrape your knee. Cars are nice, until you get into a wreck and your shit gets imploded. Frankly if we're talking about injustices against humanity, i think capital punishment is probably a bigger problem, considering that numerous people, every year are wrongly executed.
it has to depend, if it's just sitting in your cupholder or something, that's pretty suspect, but if you've got cans crushed up and stomped into a garbage can or something, to be recycled, that's gotta legal. Otherwise doing literally anything other than throwing away empty beer cans would be a crime, and i'm almost certain a significant number of people recycle beer cans and bottles.
which would be why the police aren't the only thing that determine your criminal status. Most police would realistically be operating in good faith, because at the end of the day, arresting someone means paper work, and also means transporting that person, as well dealing with any potential court hearings. It's less work to just let someone off the hook with a ticket or citation, than it is to arrest someone. And if police are not to be trusted, i see no reason for them to do more work than needed.
Not stopping for a traffic stop would be obstructing the police or something. Or, and this is super duper crazy, we could just take their license plate and send them the bill for speeding. It's a civil offense. There's no reason to get a police officer involved at all. If they're driving erratically then it falls under the same heading as running away from any other crime. The erratic driving is already the crime. There's no reason other than, "peasants must obey" to outlaw fleeing. They've already committed a crime and already need to be apprehended. Making them double need to be apprehended doesn't help society in any way.
Rape isn't a human experience. There's no "rape reflex" in our heads. That's jumping to an extreme and illogical.
Bodycams being used for corrupt purposes by a corrupt force is not a micro technicality, it's the entire fucking point.
And nope, they will accuse you of crushing them while you were waiting for the cop to run your plates. An empty container is assumed to have been fully drunk while driving.
They don't get their overtime by doing nothing. Only "earners" get the perks. And the courts and prosecutors are partial to the police because they need them to do their jobs and the police have power over them too. When Phoenix City officials in Arizona decided to not renew the Maricopa County Sheriff's contract because of all the shit Sheriff Arpaio was doing he straight up harrassed them. Then he tried to do it to the Maricopa County board and several prosecutors as well. It's only because it's an elected position that he was taken care of eventually. And that's just the one I saw personally. These cases are all over the place. If you look up Judges sending kids to Juvie for kickbacks you have to specify which scandal you mean.
The system is not on your side.
i suppose it could also be obstruction, that's usually reserved for outside influence though. Or the odd case where something like resisting doesn't work.
In regards to your recommendation of what is essentially botnet spying on people, i'm going to have to give you a hard pass there. Cops very well could do that, and i suppose they could file for a ticket manually, but doing that automatically is a massive privacy violation, and insanely capable of being abused.