Drunk driver arrested and car towed - what do police do with drunk passengers?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I put this question in IMHO because there’s probably no GQ answer applicable across most jurisdictions, arresting officers and drunks. Personal experiences and best guesses are perfectly appropriate responses.

[hypothetical] I am a passenger in a car being driven by my friend and we are both well over the legal limit. My friend quite correctly and fortunately gets pulled over by the police before somebody gets killed. He tests at 0.31 on the breathalyzer, is promptly arrested and is hauled off to sober up and consider the actual cost of those last several drinks. What do the police do with me? I’m no more sober than my friend, have no transportation and couldn’t safely use it if I did and can barely stand much less find a safe place to seek shelter. With that being said, I’m as polite and compliant as I can be considering that if you gave me a map, a flashlight and both hands, I’m not sure I could find my own ass.

Some obvious options come to mind:

option 1) - The arresting officer could offer to give me a ride to the police station to give me a safe place to wait and possible use of a phone while alternate transportation can be arranged.

option 2) - Call an ambulance. If the police consider me to be a legitimate danger to myself, they may summon an ambulance and try to convince me to go to the hospital. It may be possible for them to order me to the hospital ignoring any specific objections I may raise on the grounds that I’m too intoxicated to make that judgement for myself. Could be?

option 3) - Arrest me on a “Drunk in Public” charge. My experience suggests police will not usually arrest drunks that are not loud, aggressive or disruptive. If I’m a potential danger to myself though, it may be the best option.

option 4) - Let me wobble on my inebriated way on foot and whatever happens, happens.

option 5) - Something I can’t think of right now.

What’s most likely going to happen to me

2

1 and 2 are the most likely. We don’t have a public drunkenness statute in New Jersey so 3 can’t happen. 4 can happen if you don’t appear to be drunk enough to be a liability.

3

Based on what I’ve seen on Live PD there are several options. Right off the bat, if you’re being a belligerent asshole the entire time, you’ll probably end up getting arrested. Assuming that you’ve been cooperative and the officer would prefer not to arrest you and you’re not hammered to the point where they feel you could be a danger to yourself, the most common thing I’ve seen them do is offer you the opportunity to call a friend. Either to come and pick you up, or if it’s okay with the driver, to bring another (sober) friend to drive the other car home as well. In the day and age of Uber/Lyft and virtually everyone having a cell phone, the drunk passenger can usually find some way to get home.

If the person really can’t find a ride and they’re too far to walk, the next most common thing I’ve seen is calling them an ambulance that’ll take them to the hospital to sober up for a few hours.

I’ve seen them give rides home every once in a while, but it appears to be at the discretion of the officer (and the officer has the time and the correct vehicle there to transport someone).

Regarding your option 2, I’ve seen them call an ambulance to take them to the hospital and not give them a choice, but that seems to be reserved for the people that are so shitfaced they don’t even know what’s going on. They concern they usually cite is that if that person goes home, they’ll be a danger to themselves (ie falling asleep/vomiting/choking), but even in those cases if the officer can convince them to call someone, they’ll usually go for that.

I think even the cops understand that it’s a waste of resources for you to sober up at a hospital and no one wants and most people can’t afford and unexpected ER/hospital bill just because they were drunk.

So, short answer, based on what I’ve seen, they would much, much prefer you find a ride home. Start calling friends, parents, uber, anyone at all that can come get you. It’ll be better for everyone involved that way.

Arresting them for no reason other than being drunk, seems to be a last resort. It seems to only happen when the person is being belligerent, uncooperative, or otherwise provokes the cop into arresting them. I don’t think the cops want to arrest a drunk person for no reason other than they are drunk any more than that person wants to get arrested.

4

You can call someone to pick you up. Depending on the location and if it’s not too busy, you might get a ride home from them. Otherwise you will be brought to the precinct and have to make your own arrangements from there.

If the stop/arrest happened on a highway, they aren’t going to wait with you for your ride to show up and they can’t leave you stranded out there, drunk and creating a danger to yourself and others by stumbling around. You will get brought back to to the precinct or a rest stop to call a friend or whatever and have them meet you there to drive you home.

5

IME, YMMV.

I never transported a patient to a hospital to “sober up” unless they were so sloshed that there was serious concerns of acute alcohol poisoning. A patient can refuse transport and our hands are pretty much tied. even if we took him to the hospital, unless hes on a psych hold or under arrest he can walk out. our bosses would be really annoyed with us for transporting them.

I have seen dozens of people told…start walking… This was well before uber was a thing.

6

Thirty five years ago, pre cellphone and pre Uber, I was that passenger and I was told to start walking. I did.

Regarding option 2, ambulance to the hospital, as **drachillix[/B pointed out, not usually a thing. Sure if you can’t wake up and respond to the cop, that’s fine, but otherwise, no. Hospital ERs are not meant to be utilized as daycares for drunks without rides.

7

I’ve been that passenger more than once.

The arresting officer gave me a ride home on two occasions, and I had to walk home on another.

8

Happened to me once. Cop called a cab for me and the other person.

9

Would they really leave a drunk woman alone to walk home herself?

10

Also happened to me. Arresting officer hauled my dumbass*…not GF but something… off to the station and the backup officer gave me a ride there.

  • She took me out for my birthday and was supposed to be the DD. Realized in hindsight she went to the restroom a lot. Turns out every time she went she’d do a shot or two at the bar.
11

At least in some smaller communities, the cops will give the passenger a ride home.

Don’t ask me how I know.

12

I’ve had several friends hauled off over the years to the drunk tank to sober up in two different parts of Colorado so I assume that would be the procedure here it or may not be accompanied by a ticket depending on how much of an ass hole you were but you’ll have to pay for the time in the drunk tank which is normally a hundred or so bucks.

13

Ambulance rides are also not free, and can be unexpectedly expensive.

14

Around here I would say 1 or 3 or:

let you call someone from your cell phone and possibly baby-sit you until they come and collect your sorry drunk ass. That seems the popular choice along the South Side.

15

Damn right!

Hospital ERs are meant to be utilized as family doctor offices so folks without health insurance can see a doctor about aches, pains, and runny noses.

ETA: And I think people who look at this as a bad thing are missing something very important: shouldn’t everybody’s GP have all the cool diagnostic and trauma equipment an ER has?

16

Of course hospital ERs are not meant to be utilized that way. However it doesn’t bother me one bit. Mostly these folks have no other option.

17

Now that the question has been answered, a bit of a hijack concerning passengers of DUI drivers.

When Japan decided to get really serious about cracking down on drunk driving, they introduced penalties for passengers of druck drivers as well. Like the penalties for driving under the influence, the penalties increase if there is an accident, if someone is hurt and if someone is killed.

One of the reasons was to prevent bosses from forcing subordinates to drive when they are under the influence.

So in Japan, it may be that the passengers are arrested as well.

18

First of all, many thanks to those who replied.

I fully support this.

Now lets change it up very slightly. Suppose the drunk passenger specifically requests to be transported to the police station. They need a safe place to sit down and wait while their hopefully more sober friend picks them up. Is their any realistic reason why the arresting officer would refuse to do this?

19

I have, unfortunately, been in this very siuation. Two of us in the car. Me, I was taken to the police station wearng shiny handcuffs. My friend was driven about 3/4 of a mile home by another cop at the scene.

20

Chicago PD? Yes, and then some. Go read about Christina Eilman. It was a horrifying case. Tribune article about it: 10 years ago: Christina Eilman falls from a Chicago high-rise – Chicago Tribune Now she was a 21 year old bipolar sufferer, who’d been in the custody of CPD, and not a drunk by the side of the road, but she was turned loose in an environment where it was reasonably foreseeable that she would be the victim of a crime, like the drunk in your hypo.

Maybe things have changed—a 22 million dollar payout will do that—but never discount the bureaucratic urge to proclaim, “Not my problem, and you can’t force me to care.”