I don’t think it was “crackpottery” at all. It was abuse of police power, extreme dickishness, and possibly misogyny-driven. Crackpottery, to me, implies at least a smidgen of innocence. I see none in the behavior of those “police officers”.
Another vote for seeing a lawyer. Preferably a big-name lawyer in your town. If the story is true as presented, she’s getting screwed.
FWIW, I have one friend who was a passenger (not driving because she was drunk) who was arrested on public intox after the cops asked her to get out of the car to talk to them. She was also strip-searched complete with cavity check when she got to the station, but that’s another story - there was later a successful class-action lawsuit over that little routine.
I also know of an occasion when the cops came in to roust a local bar for underage drinking. When they realized that there were no underage drinkers, they started asking patrons to step outside for a moment on the grounds that it was too loud for conversation in the bar with the band playing. As soon as they hit the sidewalk, said patrons were arrested for public intox.
Some cops will pull this kind of shit. A good attorney is your only defense. Another question is what the police report says - if they don’t admit to asking her to move the car, it becomes her word against theirs, and the police almost always win in that situation. A locally powerful, well-known attorney will have some personal clout to use.
I think the cops screwed up. They were wrong for letting her get behind the wheel and even more wrong for then arresting her for a simple mistake.
She was wrong too, she should have told them to ticket the car if they were going to enforce the no parking thing rather than drive it any distance. I suppose, though, that she was under the impression that the cops were on her side and would look the other way for the brief time she spent moving the car. Until she hit the can that is.
She really screwed up driving after drinking. She should have let them ticket or tow the vehicle if they could. You can be arrest in Wisconsin if you insert the key, you don’t have to start a vehicle. I was a number of bad choices on the part of this women. I guess the imparment of alcohol, added to the decission to move the car, when the cops asked her too. I consider the cops asking her to move the vehicle bad judgement on their part to try and catch her driving drunk. It still doesn’t change her irresponsible decission to drive.
I believe she was merely obeying what they told her to do. And the cops realized after she tagged the garbage can that THEY screwed up. Plain and simple. I do not place much fault on the woman following directions. My wife already told her she would step up as a charactor witness. If they still use those.
Oh come ON. She’s being told by policemen to move her car. I don’t blame her for thinking it’d be a damn good idea to do what they tell you.
The cops will lie. She will lose.
Rule number one never committ a greater crime, so the cops won’t charge you for a smaller one. They will give you a rope to hang yourself. She put her head in in it. I’ve seen drunk driving aftermaths enough times that I won’t excuse a drunk driver. Tough for her.
This is one of those cases where I think you almost really needed to be there. I mena it is just odd that the officer would ask her to move the car from a private parking lot, even if ther eis a sign posted. I wouldn’t be surprised if what the officer said was, “OK, you can walk home. But you do realize that you can’t park your car here over night.” “Well, where can I park it?” 'The parking lot by the bar is ok to leave over night."
This is subtle, but I don’t know if that would constitute giving her permission to move her car herself if she was intoxicated. I didn’t see in the story where the original officer determined whether she was safe to drive. Just whether he believed she was walking home.
If I was her, I would have told the cops that I was not comfortable moving the car because, as I had previously said, I had been drinking. Then I would have offered them my keys and asked if they could please move the car. If they said no, then I would have said that it would have to be ticketed or towed because I would not drive under the influence.
I seriously doubt that it was an order for her to move the car. Did they threaten her with arrest if she didn’t? Or did they just ask her to move it? I’m betting that she did not specifically tell them she was intoxicated at the beginning, so that when they asked her to move the car, she didn’t want to say no because that would reveal that she had not been upfront with them.
Why on earth did she get in the car and drive it when she had been drinking, in front of cops, no less? Did she honestly believe they were giving her a free pass to drink and drive? That is just silly. She made a huge mistake. If she hit a garbage can, she could have easily have it a person.
This is why we have laws against entrapment. Officers cannot encourage you to break the law and then arrest you for it. It has nothing to do with them ordering you to break the law, the act of encouragement is enough to be considered entrapment. They suggested that she would get in trouble if she didn’t move the car, then arrested her for moving the car.
Frankly, the idea that she had to tell them she was intoxicated is ridiculous. It’s night time, you come from a bar, and go to your car to get your stuff and walk home, WTF do the cops think is going on? Is there any conceivable reason other than intoxication for a person to choose to walk home at night instead of drive their car? There isn’t a cop out there not thinking drunk driver when they see this event unfolding.
Don’t cops usually move the car for you in a situation like this? Perhaps they’re even obligated to do so?
Even if they were trying to call her bluff on being drunk, how did they know the results wouldn’t be worse than clipping a trash can? She could have shifted into reverse without realizing it and backed up over one of them, for instance. Pretty big risk to take when they could have gone right to the field sobriety test.
No, cops do not automatically get in someones car and move it out of harms way…At least not where I come from. I think it was a mistake on the cops part, and when they finally realized it, it was too late. Perhaps they thought it was the lesser of two evils arresting her after telling her to move the car. There is fault on both parties here, but unfortunately I think it will fall upon the woman in the end, not the cops. which is extremely unfortunate because she is such a wonderful woman. This kind of dickery has been seen before in this town, but not to this extent.