It wasn't a dark and stormy night on May 15th. Unless, of course, you happened to Debra Bolton, energy lawyer, who had had a glass of wine with dinner and was driving home at 12:30 in the morning. Her headlights were out & one of the district's finest, Police Office Dennis "My Last Name is a Joke" Fair, pulled her over.
She apologized and explained that perhaps the garage attendant--those sneaky bastards--had turned off the automatic lights mechanism. Although she tested .03 on the Intoxilyzer test--well below the legal limit, WHAM!, she was arrested, handcuffed, thrown in jail, and charged with driving under the affluence of inkahol.
Zero tolerance! That's the new modus opperandus in D.C. One sip & your zipped.
Said Officer Fair, "If you get behind the wheel of a car with any measurable amount of alcohol, you will be dealt with in D.C. We have zero tolerance. . . . Anything above .01, we can arrest."
No one's said anything about crack, PCP, acid, mescaline, meth, or heroin, so I guess those are o.k.
To be fair (yuk, yuk, get it), applied properly, it ain't a bad policy. Don't measure alcohol level, measure level of impairment. Personally, I can drink an entire bottle of Jameson's Irish Whiskey & drive with no problem--as long as the car isn't moving.
Some people can't hold their booze. Hell, some sober people can't drive.
I'm very familiar with this policy because a couple of months ago (don't tell the D.C. police,)I got pulled over for allegedly making a turn when people were in the crosswalk. One of them was in the gutter, bleeding from multiple stab wounds. The other was sprawled on the other side of the road, snoring away peaceful, but zero tolerance is becoming a big thing in D.C.
To make matters worse, I'd left my wallet home. The police officers couldn't have been more polite and professional. They asked me if I'd been drinking & I promptly lied and said, yes, I'd been at an Irish wake and had had 2 drinks. (That's only a partial lie. In the past hour, I probably had 2 drinks.) Out of the car, I go, ho ho. One of the officers starts waving a small flashlight in front of my face, telling me to follow it with my eyes. I move my head & he calls in reinforcements.
I'm cooked. Actually, I'm pickled, but I'm hiding it well. Up comes another officer, struts up and pulls out his flashlight. With an intensity of concentration I didn't know I possessed, I passed with flying colors.
"You know," he said, "with this little thing, I can tell you exactly how much you had to drink."
I kept my mouth shut. (By the way, my wife, who had a driver's license, flunked the test.)
So...after a while, they finally get Virginia to acknowledge I'm not only a resident but have a legal driver's license, the officer gives me a warning, and we drive off....very, very slowly.
Now...this policy makes some sense--if they'd apply it properly and consistently. I'd had a lot more than two drinks, but it was over a long period & I'd powered down enough greasy food & desert to soak up most of it. And I wasn't impaired...well, no more than normal.
But poor Debra, she's still fighting her arrest. Someone should tell Officer Fair about that neat flashlight trick.
