"I kept it for his courtesy, like I said with his phone, key and wallet," Bradley told investigators. "It's my mistake. I forgot to give him his stuff back and he tracked it."
If so, then I think you've got police problems, not police unions problems.
Holy cow.
But "audacious" and "bold" are probably better words to describe it. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but it's inherently risky to confront someone who has taken your property since they have already shown a willingness to break the law. It's a coin toss whether they will perceive the confrontation as a threat and react violently.
All that without even considering that he was dealing with a police officer who, de facto, will be given the benefit of the doubt in a confrontation and may behave accordingly. Not all cops are bad, I think most are good actually, but you have no way of knowing which one you will get in a situation like this. I'm very glad that this ended well (as well as it could have) for him.
He's not brave. He's dense enough to still believe in the system. See also: Knocking on the door of a cop who you've got beef with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
See this post elsewhere in the thread too:
> That's more than the salary of the Illinois State Police director.
It’s like saying why does the drug cartel leader keep selling drugs, he’s swimming in cash (literally).
If you've never heard of Civil Asset Forfeiture, it will probably make your blood boil if you look it up and learn about its abuse.
Assuming the best case version of this guy’s story he arrested this guy for the DUI and then forgot to check in his wallet, key, and laptop or whatever. Fine, not unbelievable. But it doesn’t look like he followed up about the DUI thing.
I assume it varies but for most places if you refuse roadside field sobriety tests and they feel you have given indicators of impairment they will take you into custody. Then they'll take you to the station and give you the option of taking a breathalyzer and if you refuse again your license is automatically suspended for a year.
The cop got a free laptop so of course the ball got dropped. The point is he they didn't want it dragged through court where that could be easily uncovered so he just dropped the ball. $5k+ lawyer fees minimum if they decide to prosecute the DUI vs $2k at best laptop. The math is supposed easy for the accused.
So then this guy goes and gets the GPS info, confronts the cop, it spirals, whole thing comes crashing down.
And now the state is going after this cop because he's at the very least implicitly making DUI enforcement look bad.
I expect he will be pardoned by Trump because of his creativity.
I'm saying that I am considering how to tell my kids that lying and cheating and graft are the way America works now, and that this cop did exactly that.
If you are making a clever comment to expose my snarkiness, feel free to down vote me and maybe others will follow you down that path.
I'm not AI so it will sting a little bit and maybe I'll be more civil next time.
Much as I hope Bradley would be fired and lose his pension for abuse of power, this part is on Holland. In my state, refusing a breathalyzer is by law an automatic penalty because of the "implied consent statute" that you accept when you get behind the wheel: automatic license suspension for 1 year, and you still have to face the officer's testimony. There are consequences to the refusal that have nothing to do with the officer.
Prosecutors need cops. Cops bring them cases. Cops testify in their cases. If they piss off the cops they can't do their job.
The whole apparatus is shameful.
What does sending "sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers" have to do with cover-ups? Anyways my guess is that it's general policy for police/courts to not release evidence unless it's part of a trial, similar to how the Epstein files weren't released across 3 administrations and took an act of congress to get released.
The real problem isn't the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, but the informal doctrine of "police don't get prosecuted for crimes, and if they are, they don't get convicted."
I'm strongly inclined to include the abbreviated phrase in a list of thought-stopping cliches if only for that reason (though not the correct and complete version you provide).
Google's Ngram viewer shows usage beginning in the 1930s: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fe>.
Application to police from The Nation in 1956:
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Nation/Ay8QAAAAIAAJ...>
So people work as much as possible during that time and your peers are expected to make way for you to get as many hours as possible because it’s your turn.
One of many reasons why pensions are broken and going away. When the payout math was based on what people were typically paid but everyone plays games to double or triple it during the calculation window it breaks down.
Would be easy to fix by making it calculated over an entire career rather than the last 3 years, but when the people who make the rules also want their pension gamified you can’t get the rules changed.
So instead they’re just going away for everyone.
From https://isp.illinois.gov/JoinIsp/BecomeATrooper:
Officers may retire from the ISP with pension benefits under the following plans: Tier 1 This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system on or before December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 50 with 25 years of service, or at age 55 with 20 years of service.
Tier 2 This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system after December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 55 with 20 years of service.
A maximum retirement benefit of 80% of ending salary is earned after 26 years and 8 months of creditable service.
Yep! Stand around for 4-5 hours on a Saturday morning (often hungover; I personally know cops) and pad that overtime and pension.
And beyond that they're so awash with money that they're turning into paramilitary forces.
And on top of that we have a regime of legalized theft aka civil asset forfeiture. Often the police departments get to keep some or all of what they seize. They'll often get a cut of ticket revenue too such that cops will have quotas of tickets to write.
Combine the two and you end up with so-called "forfeiture corridors". You might find that drugs go one way but the cash goes the other and they'll only police the cash direction with excessive stops and tickets to seize as much acashn as they can get and then the burden is on you to prove the cash is not the proceeds of crime.
Should be illegal.
I am neither left nor right, but I feel like I need to say this much more in spaces that heavily lean left -- I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
Look for “if cops say I smell Alcohol, say these words” on YouTube, gives you tips on how to respond if asked about alcohol use or doing a sobriety test.
But your car still gets towed even if you pass the tests at the station and don't ultimately get charged because you refused the field test.
Per the article, he refused the old walk-along-a-straight-line-without-swaying, not a blood test (nor even a breathalyser).
Blood tests are not administered in the field, they would be administered at a nearby medical facility, later in this process.
Ask yourself why an officer would want to use a set of tests that require being subjective instead of deferring to a breathalyzer.
A cop pulled me over once, claiming I ran a red light (It was bullshit, and I had the dash cam footage to prove it). He insisted on me doing a field sobriety test based on my breath supposedly smelling like alcohol, despite me not having anything to drink.
I wanted to just skip the bullshit and take a breathalyzer. It was freezing cold out, and I'm a Wears Shorts Year-Round Guy(tm), which normally doesn't bother me since I'm only outside for like 15 seconds between my car and whatever building I'm going into/out of, but a field sobriety was gonna have me in the cold for several minutes.
He basically said that if I wanted to take a breathalyzer, he'd gladly drive me down to the station to do it.
This cop already decided I was guilty of two crimes with zero evidence because he has an arrest quota to meet.
And sure, you can argue that arrest quotas are illegal and don't exist, but it's one of those things where it doesn't exist on paper, but they basically still have a de facto existence because of performance tracking.
>No. Field sobriety tests are not mandatory in Illinois. A driver may legally refuse to participate in field sobriety testing without violating Illinois law. These roadside tests are voluntary and are not part of the State’s implied consent laws.
https://dohmanlaw.com/refusing-a-field-sobriety-test-in-illi...
Overtime is supposed to be a penalty to the employer for having unreasonable work hours. It shouldn't be something employees can willingly engage in to boost their take home pay. Especially when we are talking about cops and emergency services. I don't want to be working with a cop that has been on the clock for 80 hours.
It's a bit crazy that cities are paying so much extra for their police force because cops want a cushy retirement.
I guess?
I mean you go ahead and call that a release.
If it brings you comfort.
The US government is just corrupt from tip to tail. Why everyone continuously acts surprised about these things is genuinely a mystery?
And I don’t have a source, so it’s anecdotal but one of those things where you read enough of these cases and even see how cops are trained that the intent for most stops unrelated to genuine traffic violations is to get cause to search the vehicle.
I think back to some of those corridors within the United States where law enforcement abuse cash forfeiture laws to take peoples money.
Might I suggest that you research it and post what you find.
Think of a field sobriety test. Now think of if that actually tests for sobriety. There, there's your source.
He refused the blood draw as was his right.
The final paragraph:
"Court overtime
For every DUI arrest made, state police troopers must appear in court, and in evidence motions filed with the court, attorneys have said this has led to a staggering amount of overtime pay for Trooper Bradley.
State records show in 2024, Bradley nearly tripled his salary, earning nearly $250,000 in one year."
> Why is someone making that much money [from] stealing a MacBook
instead of
> Why is someone [who is] making that much money stealing a MacBook
Sorry about that.
A positive result will get you arrested and taken to the station, where they have the (non-portable) court admissible calibrated kit.
And if giving every cop a calibrated breathalizer is too expensive: give them a reasonably-accurate one for in the field, then take everyone who fails it to the station for a retest on an expensive calibrated one.
>> And the police budget as a whole is often the top line item.
> No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way.
Where I live municipalities do not run schools, rather it is the province. My municipality breaks out fire and paramedic separately.
Smaller municipalities or regions (~counties) may 'contract out' to the provincial (~state) police for a local detachment, but would have a line item for such payment.
You almost always want to be looking at the total tax breakdown for your area, which will almost always include multiple taxing bodies. Where we are, "village" (police, fire, public works, permits, customer service), "township" (human services like elder care and youth programs), "library", "parks", "K8 schools", and "high school" are all separate taxing bodies, along with "county", "state", and... "water reclamation".
But if you just add everything up, police is something like 14% of the budget, and schools are over 2/3rds.
Again, sadly, almost never happens.
Just kind of displays the. corruption and duplicity of the US legal system.
[0] The people paid to perform these analyses in the first place and then go testify convincingly for the prosecution about it but that's a whole separate rant.
In California, you are required to submit to chemical testing (breath, urine, or blood — I don’t recall the rules for which applies in which situations). However, you are not required to otherwise talk to or perform the absurd procedure of the field sobriety test (“you have the right to remain silent”).
For example, https://www.gov.uk/stopped-by-police-while-driving-your-righ....
I took OpenAI's references as correct without checking legislation as I'm on my phone.
If the police decide to have you exit the car and do the field tests, the odds are high they have already decided to arrest you. At that point, it's best to refuse all unless you have had absolutely zero drugs/alcohol. And then the question has to be why did they have you get out the car.
I've known several non-bastard cops.
Which is the point of the saying. It’s not that all cops are individually bastardly, it’s that all cops are part of a system that both protects bastards regularly, and does systemically bastardly things (like say heavily policing crimes of poverty while ignoring crimes of wealth).
> systemically bastardly things (like say heavily policing crimes of poverty while ignoring crimes of wealth)
I'm the last person I would expect to be defending police, but I think if you look at the rate of physical and property violence perpetrated by "crimes of poverty" vs. "crimes of wealth" that might have a lot more to do with it than the cop trying to decide if the victim has money or not before they do anything.
If Mother Theresa or Mister Rogers becomes a cop, ACAB isn't suddenly disproved, because it's not about specific individuals and their specific moral qualities. It's about systemic and fundamental problems with policing as a whole.
See how ACAB is a lot easier to say?
Only if the other person is arguing in good faith and believes you.
Police probably shouldn't be sued for performing their duties. But the issue is that with a few choice words (I feared for my safety/life) their "duties" cover a wide array of actions that a lot of citizens would argue it shouldn't.
Example: There are many cases of Cops stepping in front of a moving vehicle when confronting a suspect, which then is used as a reason to shoot and kill the suspect because "their life was in danger". But it's very easy to argue that the Cop put their own life in danger by stepping in front of the vehicle. IMO, that should not be covered by qualified immunity, and yet it usually is.
Getting rid of qualified immunity wouldn't do jack squat to change that. The problem is an informal culture where police are not prosecuted (or if prosecuted, not convicted) for crimes.
Qualified immunity also applies to the officer who individually. The department can be sued still.
I said I hadn't and didn't know anybody who did. It's true that I don't and had not been around any and there's no way my car smelled like drugs. I think I was on the verge of heat stroke and basically didn't respond with any level of stress to anything he said. I was being pulled over for driving without a seatbelt, which I almost never do, but it was 95 degrees and my AC was broken and I couldn't bring myself to put my back against the chair (plus I was in the middle of nowhere).
Another cop also showed up reasonlessly to hang around behind the other one with his lights on after awhile (I'd pulled into a gas station), which I think was also supposed to freak me out. I ended up excusing myself to go stand in the gas station to cool down and when I came back they were gone
Of note, in my state implied consent applies after the arrest. I believe this limits the information the officer gets for free before making the judgement for your arrest. It's easier in her book to defend a case where they have to show probable cause for the arrest without that free information. I have never driven under the influence, I used her for a "I don't know how fast you were going but it was fast so here's a reckless driving ticket" before and this was the card she gave me. I wonder if this approach lets her use fruit of the poisoned tree approach to dismiss cases where the cause for the arrest was flimsy gets any evidence afterwards inadmissible. Again, I only watched her work one case. The judged called the case, she asked to confer with the prosecutor, then the prosecutor dropped all charges. Took five minutes.
Note, I am not a lawyer and I am recollecting information from 20 years ago. Things may have changed. Consult your lawyer, not YouTube.
> To Washington State Law Enforcement Agents Who Have Stopped, Detained, or Arrested Me.
> I want an attorney and help contacting one. I will not answer questions or speak to you except for identification purposes. I do not consent to detention or search of my person, belongings, automobile, or any other item or place. Since they are voluntary, I will not perform field sobriety tests or take the portable breath test (PBT). I will consent to take a breath or blood test at the station, unless my attorney advises me not to. I understand that if I refuse, DOL will suspend my license for at least 1 year.
More or less what I recalled, but written in a way that's both for the officer and yourself.
The right to demand a blood test or other mechanism of having the state own the burden of proof might be inconvenient but it's integral to a fairly operating system, just like the right to demand a lawyer or representation.
To support the societal belief in law and order, it is much more important to punish the meta issues where the government is itself causing harm. It's not that there should magically be no crime committed by police officers. But rather every single crime should be investigated and prosecuted to the utmost extent.
They have breathalyzers and blood tests. Field sobriety tests are not there to help police arrest drunk drivers, they're there to help police arrest whomever they want to.
> I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
The U.S. is one of the most punishment-happy countries in the world. Nearly every politician vows to be "tough on crime". This is an incredible thing to say given the past 50 years of policing and justice in the U.S. Won't somebody please think of the children!?
> I am neither left nor right
The "center" is constantly moving and has been, on average, shifting far to the right over the last 20 years. Anyone who claims to be a centrist is therefore either changing their politics with the wind, or was far right all along.
You're wrong about that. "Sobriety" isn't limited to alcohol. You'll notice that most laws against drunk driving are actually against being "intoxicated" or "impaired". Breathalyzers and blood tests are for gathering indisputable evidence.
Field sobriety tests are there to determine if you're motor skills are impaired. If an officer observers a person driving erratically and they can't walk a straight line or touch their own nose, they shouldn't be driving. You can be arrested for DUI [of sleeping pills].
The only time police would specify a DUI was for alcohol is if a breathalyzer or blood test showed that. Even if the officer says there was a beer can on the floor and they smelled like alcohol, they could be under the legal limit and be on any number of other substances so the DUI wouldn't specify alcohol.
There are plenty of reasons that someone might not be able to demonstrate this to the subjective opinion of an officer and be completely unimpaired and competent at driving. e.g. people with atypical minds or bodies
Police generally ask people to do these tests when they have already made up their mind about someone being impaired. The only point of the test, practically, is generate standardized documentation. It is a dog and pony show.
Other countries that have serious anti-driving-impairment programs don't use these types of subjective tests -- they test people for using the substances directly.
Having criminal police is possibly worse than having no police. "First, do no harm" right?
I have tremendous respect for the work that good police do. I support laws that have higher penalties for crimes against police and other public workers. But respect is a two-way street. I also support higher penalties for crimes committed by police and other public workers.
And note that “involving” is very much not the same thing as “caused by”. Yes, “caused by” will be a big chunk of it, but there's a reason the latter term is not used.
At any rate, the solution is to fire all of the corrupt cops and strictly enforce ethical and legal rules. Everything considered to be evidence needs to have an actual scientific basis for it. No more arresting people for being drunk because an officer with three months of training is considered to be an expert judge in impairment. Officers caught lying about the basis for an arrest should be imprisoned. Enforce the law, but do it in both directions.
I don't think most reasonable people want police to be personally liable for every single thing they do, but neither do they want them to have broad and complete immunity from the law. The answer is somewhere in the middle, where police are protected in certain situations, but do still need to think about the consequences of their actions.
I didn't do more than 30 seconds of research here so I won't claim to be an expert, but according to the report in [1], Texas is the state with the fifth highest medical bills, "highest percentage of adults who have chosen not to see a doctor at some point in the past 12 months due to cost", and "the highest percentage of children—14.9%—whose families struggled to pay for their child’s medical bills in the past 12 months".
Some of that is no doubt Texas refusing to expand Medicaid under the ACA, but also "the study found that Texas exhibits the fourth-highest annual premium for both plus-one health insurance coverage ($4,626) and family health insurance coverage ($7,051.33) through an employer," so "a good deal cheaper" doesn't really seem an apt descriptor.
[1] https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article291990...
We're legitimately at the point where mcdondalds cashiers have higher standards for accountability and behavior than the police. Just sit back and really, really think about that. And, to top it off, there's droves of people like yourself who are so accustomed to such a broken system that they legitimately believe it couldn't be done any other way - even though there are minimum wage workers working under stricter rules!
Who said that? The cops don’t need to ”decide” to bust you based on how much money you have, the system already put them on patrol in the poorer neighborhood.
The police are too busy going after crimes of poverty to go after the crimes that impoverish people. “Crimes of wealth” do plenty of violence, it’s just laundered thru abstractions and layers of misdirection.
> “Crimes of wealth” do plenty of violence
Not for actual definitions of violence, no. I'm not saying they're not crimes, or they're not serious, but there's a reason "violent crime" is a category of its own. It's an important distinction. Words mean things, and trying to say murder or aggravated battery is just one kind of violence and embezzlement or stock fraud is a different kind is, at best, incredibly dishonest.
Marijuana was made schedule 1 close to 60 years ago, and it's very possible the people who made that decision had racist motivations. It's also possible they didn't and they just wanted to punish anyone who was using marijuana more than other drugs.
"People working at the DEA 60 years after this decision was made are very obviously racist and hate blacks and poor people" is much more of a stretch than "nobody really cares enough about this to change it and it wouldn't change very much anyway," isn't it? Unless, of course, you're not interested in actually understanding why things are the way they are and are more interested in perpetuating some victimhood fantasy.
Unfortunately, the same happens in other high stress industries. Nurses are wild too.
Is Florida State University also a high-stress environment?
or…birds of a feather?
For some reason, modern police culture in american seems to increasingly value a corporatist perspective of us vs them (them being everyone who is not police), the normalization of violent response, fixation with the concept of face and widespread corruption.
Police Unions didn't create them, and abolishing them won't eliminate their lobbying power, you don't need a union to organize yourself around a lobby.
Let's not use this excuse to perpetuate the demonization of unions. After decades of increase concentration of productivity gains in the hands of capital at the expense of labor, and as we enter the AI age, this is the least thing we need.
You pay every beat cop in the country $1 million/yr and they would never agree to the level of accountability most people expect. Independent review of actions by someone outside the chain of command? Unpaid leave when you're under investigation? At-will employment? Raises and promotions based on skill, not seniority? Random, immediate, and pass-fail physical, psychological, and marksmanship tests? Most of these seem completely reasonable to most people and if you said even one of them in a contract negotiation the first order of business by the union rep would be to remove you from contract negotiation.
You can do the same thing by saying "jury nullification" during the jury duty selection process. You can watch BOTH lawyers scramble to kick you out of the room.
To be fair, how many people can say they have?
In this case, it doesn't apply because theft isn't part of an officer's regular duties. You can't sue an officer for taking your laptop and putting it in evidence. You can sue an officer for taking your laptop home.
Again, I agree with you that this should be true in principle, but I don't have faith that it will apply in this case, and this is contrary to the stated position of the police department.
When is this exactly? 52 years on this planet and am yet to witness this event… :)
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/17...
Demand of people who want your vote in the coming elections that they support a legislative correction to this judicial activism. This country was founded in large part because 250 years ago the British sent soldiers into American cities and American homes, with powers to detain, arrest and deprive of life and liberty with no accountability. If a colonial was wrongly treated they would force adjudication in favorable courts back in Britain, effectively making their soldiers immune from accountability.
The fact our judicial system has saw fit to independently replicate this injustice that none of us voted for is a crime against the very notion of what it means to be an American. Hold your leaders accountable.
In Seattle, the police are "quiet quitting" (traffic ticketing is down 8x over ~10 years ago) and literally committing fraud and getting away with it (an officer on his second time falsely applying over 24 hours of work in a day, just had to return the pay for that week. There's STILL not computerized time tracking...)
They use the bargaining to set contract terms that restrict how people can be fired.
A union member who gets in trouble can leverage union resources and representation to protect themselves.
One of my family members did a term as a union rep. He was getting really frustrated with some of the little claims that union members wanted to use the union to protect themselves from, but it was part of the job. Fortunately for him there wasn’t a serious incident like this to deal with during his term.
There is no way my colleagues would go out on strike to protect me if I stole anything. And that's absolutely right. Nor would I expect my union to go into bat for me, after anything like that was proven; nor for anything immoral.
Mad.
Unions are there to make sure you're treated fairly, not to shield members from consequences when they act immorally/illegally.
> Nor would I expect my union to go into bat for me, after anything like that was proven
Sure, but one of the jobs of the rep is to prevent it from being proven that you are guilty.
Also, there would be no need to strike, because the union has negotiated the bureaucratic processes that will be followed when you do something wrong. Following the usually slow process will let you look for ways to escape, including the company not properly filing paperwork within the allotted time.
Source: union steward's stories.
One could argue that as litigious as US society has become, it makes sense to find out what resources are available when you’re the target of a grievance.
Further, since we are also a society of specialists, one should consult a specialist when one is the target of aforementioned grievances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_police_shoving_inciden...
>The Buffalo police union, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, was angered by the suspensions of the two officers, and it retaliated on June 5 by withdrawing its legal fees support for any other Buffalo officers for incidents related to the protests. [...] All 57 police officers from the Buffalo Police Department emergency response team resigned from the team, although they did not resign from the department.[45] According to the police union's president, the mass resignations were a show of solidarity with the two suspended officers.[46] However, his account has been contradicted by two of the resigned officers, who stated they resigned because of a lack of legal coverage. One of these officers said "many" of the 57 resigned officers did not resign to support the two suspended officers.[47]
>The Buffalo police union, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, was angered by the suspensions of the two officers, and it retaliated on June 5 by withdrawing its legal fees support for any other Buffalo officers for incidents related to the protests.
Why do you think the union withdrew legal support here, given that the union supported the officers?
edit: a source (I assume lawyers.com is reputable..) https://legal-info.lawyers.com/labor-employment-law/wage-and...
See "Blue flu" for cases where cops coordinate a strike using sick leave. Another way they strike is by simply not doing their job. They'll just sit in their cars all day and won't respond or will severely delay response to dispatch.
AFAIK, those cops never get a ATF style house cleaning.
These days, so much of that will be recorded on video, from the dash cam to the body cam, it's usually cut and dry that the person accused is under the influence of something.
> people with atypical minds or bodies
This is a reasonable concern so I don't want to dismiss it but this isn't even close to the typical situation and, to emphasize, the reason for the stop is usually bad driving and the officer is looking for an explanation. Before a sobriety test is administered, there is already a cause for being pulled over. So people who can't pass a sobriety test because they have a physical or mental reason they can't only have that one piece of evidence against them removed.
I'm sure you can construct a hypothetical case where a person with a speech impairment, an inner ear deformaty and who's eyes shake when moving left and right gets arrested for DUI because they appear impaired but they weren't pulled over for those reasons.
Not only does it cause significant problems for people who are unjustly jailed and charged for crimes they didn't commit -- but it also lets drunk drivers off the hook when the flimsy evidence fails to convict. These aren't hypotheticals, both are very common.
Police in the US simply need to be equipped with roadside chemical tests for substances. They exist, they just simply don't use them.
Here's is an example of what other countries do:
https://adf.org.au/insights/roadside-drug-testing/
> The officer takes a sample of your saliva by placing an absorbent collector in the mouth or on the tongue. The sample is then analysed at the roadside. If the test is positive, it must be confirmed by laboratory testing before charges can be laid.
Doesn't that sound like a better solution than: "The officer makes you stand on one leg and say the alphabet backwards, if they don't like they way you did it, you are charged with DUI"?
> I'm sure you can construct a hypothetical case where a person with a speech impairment, an inner ear deformaty and who's eyes shake when moving left and right gets arrested for DUI because they appear impaired but they weren't pulled over for those reasons.
The more common, and even more scary issue, is that sometimes people undergoing medical emergencies are arrested for DUI and sent to jail instead of a hospital. Which is again another situation that would be avoided entirely by roadside testing. This is such a common issue for diabetics that police normally do train to recognize the difference, but since they are not medical professionals and don't have adequate equipment, they still often confuse the two.
Watch this dashcam video: https://www.wsmv.com/2025/10/02/retired-deputy-arrested-dui-...
I feel like you're not getting my point.
> Doesn't that sound like a better solution than: "The officer makes you stand on one leg and say the alphabet backwards, if they don't like they way you did it, you are charged with DUI"?
No, it doesn't. DUI isn't a law that lists a bunch of chemicals that are illegal to drive while using. The purpose of the tests is to prove you shouldn't be driving, not what drugs you're on.
You could be over-tired and get a DUI and I think that's justified.
Maybe. Or they were pulled over for being black, or having tattoos, or being really hot, or because they criticized police brutality on social media, or because the officer needs to hit their arrest quota by the end of the month, or because they're driving an expensive car and the officer thinks they'll have lots of cash they can legally rob via civil asset forfeiture. We have far, far too many examples of all of these happening to say with any certainty that the police officer actually suspects anyone of an actual crime.
By the way, I have called in drivers who were badly impaired before. One kept driving up onto the curb, on the sidewalk and grass (next to a school!), then swerving back nearly into the oncoming lane, then stopping in the middle of the road, etc. Another kept swerving toward the concrete barriers on the highway, and when I passed them, they looked visibly asleep. Both times, the cops didn't care. They didn't send anyone. They sounded annoyed that I was bothering about that crap. The police do not care whether people are driving drunk or not, just like they do not care whether an active shooter is gunning down kids in an elementary school. They don't care if a violent dad with a restraining order has kidnapped his kids and is about to murder them, even when the mom tells them exactly where he has taken them. Their interests are orthogonal to the just enforcement of the law.
Yeah, good point, they were probably pulled over for being black.
But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.
Tells me we can change what police are and aren’t responsible for, and it is telling which ones they want to drop and which ones they don’t.
Looking there all that are riskier on deaths either have much lower education requirements, or also pay well.
Risk of death?
Risk of injury? How much injury? I've had paper cuts recorded as workplace injuries, I've also had to get stitches after bleeding profusely, are both equally recorded as risk incidents?
What about the risk of getting shot? Just the risk, will I get shot today, has a physiological impact, is that risk recorded?
What about the risk of moral injury? The potential that you're hurt in your soul, because you failed, and someone got injured or hurt?
What about the risk of infectious disease or transmission from needles, blades or bodily fluids?
Police may be a safer job than forestry from a death risk, but there are many risks for police.
I am not sure why some people seem to hate the police so much that downplaying the risks police face. I used to sell drugs and the police were my adversary, but I don't hate them as much as people who have never been arrested. It's very strange. Who do the cop haters call when thieves are breaking into their home with guns?
For one thing it doesn't happen that much in the first place. In 2024 the rate was 229.4 per 100k in the USA [1] And yet this always gets cited as some reason to keep the police around. These sorts of threats that people cite are exceedingly rare, and yet used to fuel a vision of the world that's one of requiring constantly vigilance and paranoia.
[1] https://www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/home-invasion-sta...
The advice given by Toronto police is to leave your car keys out by your front door so that armed home invaders can get what they came for with ease. The police don’t show up to protect you and your property. They also don’t want to risk their own safety around armed invaders.
Per this 2020 article, police offer is at #22 for fatal injury rate in the US:
* https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j...
Anecdotal:
Also, my mom's house was burglarized, unknown if they had guns. After that, she got a home alarm.
My mom moved do a different part of the city, and her home was broken into at night while she was asleep. The home invaders continued as the home alarm was going off, and only stopped when a group of male neighbors started shouting at them. Presumably the criminals had weapons to conduct their home invasion.
Here it's required to have a police detail at every road based construction site. They get paid overtime to sit there playing candy crush in case maybe something happens requiring them to direct traffic. So it seems like a win-win to replace them with citizen flaggers as it'd remove the cops from that role but also drastically lower cost to the city. But no, it'd mean taking what should be a minimum wage job and paying someone $50-100+/hr to do it.
And then the secondary debate is that some people see this as a bad thing and others see it as a good thing.
Part of the criminal element of DUI is someone's choice to alter their body intentionally. I don't think many would think it would justly apply to natural processes like sleepiness or medical emergencies. That's not to say there shouldn't be penalties for failure to operate a vehicle safely, but those situations are clearly very different than DUI.
The relevant section of the law here is:
(f) It is unlawful for a person who is under the influence of any drug to drive a vehicle.
> And it absolutely does have a list of what qualifies... and that list basically includes all drugs and alcohol.
Does it state that the list is the exhaustive list? I have a hard time believing that someone could be pulled over, obviously inebriated but get off because they were actually on some new synthetic marijuana that wasn't on that list.
And most laws in the US work this way (e.g. they are not strict liability). We often treat people differently based on why a thing happened because doing a bad thing for a bad reason is worse than doing the same thing for any other reason. For example, the penalty for killing a person might range from "absolutely nothing" to "life in prison or death" depending on why it happened.
> Does it state that the list is the exhaustive list? I have a hard time believing that someone could be pulled over, obviously inebriated but get off because they were actually on some new synthetic marijuana that wasn't on that list.
They thought of this -- the list itself includes any "chemical" that is "mind altering", as well as specific drugs.
What it doesn't include is any reason that isn't drugs or alcohol related.