A .08 BAC for 3 drinks doesn’t seem necessarily outrageous. Important variables would be how long it’s been since BioHazard last ate. I remember in college one time stumbling across the formula for figuring out how many milliliters of alcohol I could have on an empty stomach (I’m a 145-lb male) and seeing that it was approximately three “drinks,” and seeing that I could have a fourth drink on a full stomach (defined as eating a meal in the half hour preceding drinking). Plus, it takes approximately 30 minutes or so after drinking, IIRC, for your BAC to peak. It then falls by roughly .0015 every hour after that. My WAG assumes that BioHazard is male; females get a higher BAC from less alcohol than males (though I’m not exactly sure why).
BioHazard- Good luck. I was also a ‘freak’ in a small town. Really small. I’d be willing to lay money down on smaller than where you’re at.
After putting up with getting the slow cruise by from the cops, being lit up with the spot light when walking home for lunch from my work (working graves at a hospital) and on one occastion being patted down by a grocery manager, I gave up.
I walked into the cop-shop, and introduced myself, told them who I was and what I was doing in their town.
Things got smoother after that.
It’s simply because males tend to have more blood. From memory it’s about 20% more on average. So a male has to injest 20% more alcohol to achieve the same BAC.
Injest? I think not. ingest.
Yeah, that does seem pretty far-fetched. Unless, of course, Biohazard is absolutely irresistable,
That was too funny!
Bio, I hope you start keeping detailed information when they do that shit to you. You’re right that they can say anything they want about why they stopped you. But they have to have more of a reason for picking you up then dark clothes. Just be careful. Good cops are some of the finest people, but bad cops can put the screws to you. Document everything. Keep a journal.
And since this is the pit, if you’re full of shit about this, you suck.
Not entirely rhetorical question:
Is there any reason a cop can’t arrest anyone at any time for being intoxicated in a public place, bang them up for a few hours, and then breathalise them and say ‘oops, sorry’?
No, not really.
Except that for most people posting here, the people running police forces are elected officials (or appointed by elected officials), and if too many voters are harrassed without cause, both the elected official and the individual officers likely to find themselves looking for work, even if they haven’t violated the letter of the law.
A strongly worded letter to the relevant elected official would probably have more impact on the situation than a lawsuit, I should think. There’s a bit of an art to writing a letter expressing righteous fury and indignation while remaining polite enough to actually get read all the way through, though.
Well, he is 3/4 German.
Coincidently, this should also help him out if the police do get their way and turn our great country back into “NAZI FUCKING GERMANY.”
No wonder you don’t like cops.
What the hell lesson would that be? Besides, “Move out of Podunk.”
I still don’t get it. You got picked up by the police because:
[ul][li]You were in what appeared to be an inebriated state.[/li][li]You were walking in the street in said apparent state.[/li][li]After some elapsed time, your BAC, as evidenced by the test, showed you were, in fact, inebriated.[/li][li]The police officers who observed you walking in the street, instead of letting you wander around (as far as they knew) and possibly get killed by the occasional driver on the street (you know, the thing provided for automotive vehicles to drive upon), took you to the police station where they could observe you until you sobered up. (And you weren’t jailed, you were in protective custody. Essentially a free motel room for the night.)[/li][li]They removed from you items which could possibly be used in an escape, not necessarily your escape.[/li][li]They confiscated and destroyed an apparently altered or otherwise invalid driver’s license.[/ul][/li]
Sounds to me as though the police were, in fact, doing their job. Now, had they let you wander the next 100 feet and you did get hit by an oncoming vehicle, of course there’s no way you’d’ve sued them for letting you meander in the street. Oh, no way at all.
As I said, I just don’t get your rant. Where am I wrong?
kp: You have needed cops, even if you don’t realize it. That is, you have needed them & even used their services, unless, of course, every single police patrol just completely ignores your abode and you wherever you happen to be. There’s the whole idea of police presence to prevent crime.
I know I feel tons safer. If only they had simultaneously got a speeder I’d sleep easy tonight, but I know this isn’t a perfect world.
I agree, no way at all. Oh, was that sarcasm on your part? Huh.
That’s right. And in this not so perfect world, the speeders cruising around town just don’t always happen to be in the same place as the police on their patrols.
Oh, was that stupidity on your part? It certainly walks & talks like it.
Monty I don’t live in America, so I must ask how likely you think it is that somebody would sue the police for not picking them up as they walked home drunk and subsequently sustained injury in a traffic accident? Even in the caricature of overly-litigious America presented in the media here, I would think it unlikely to come across such a story, but maybe I’m wrong…
If the cops tend to be harassing you quite a bit, you might invest in a pocket tape recorder. Flip the bad boy on when they give you grief about stopping you and you’ve suddenly got actual evidence.
Mangetout: Actually, I think it would be very likely if the individual found out that the cops stood by and watched the individual walk in front of a moving vehicle.
I think Monty is %100 percent correct. If he was injured later…
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He will say that he was stopped by the police in an obviously inebriated state
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That said police had a duty to take him in to custody and failed to do so
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The injury was a direct result of their inaction.
And if BioHazard was killed, the family sues and the dollare amounts go up exponentially.
I can see the headlines now.
This is not to say the suit would be successful. Just inevitable.
BioHazard didn’t say he(?) was “meandering in the street,” he said he was walking. I think you need to re-examine how the civil justice system works in the United States, since you don’t appear to have a good grasp of it. The scenario, as described, doesn’t even come close to meriting a lawsuit. Your sarcasm is poorly placed.
Now, maybe BioHazard isn’t giving us the whole story. Maybe he really was stumbling along the road and the cops were justified in picking him up. But that’s not what he said, and that’s the only version of the facts we’ve got.
Ok Monty, maybe you are envisioning something different from what I got out of your comments. What I am envisioning is subject walking along side of road, cop car drives by, does not observe any indications of drunkenness, and a few seconds (or minutes) later, subject gets plowed by an oncoming car.