Debra Bolton got pulled over in the city where I live for driving with her headlights off. A zealous policeman inquired if she had been drinking, and she eventually admitted that she had a glass of wine at dinner. Officer Dennis Fair claims Bolton failed the field sobriety tests. Bolton denies this. The officer then administered a Breathalyzer. Bolton blew a .03. She passed...or so she thought. "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," the arresting officer is quoted in the Washington Post story on the controversy. "Anything above .01, we can arrest." The ironically named Fair knows of what he speaks. The fifteen year police veteran makes about 100 driving under the influence (DUI) arrests each year. Fair arrested wife of late Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke in 1998, and on May 15, he arrested Debra Bolton. She stayed in jail that night until 4:30 a.m.

Drunk drivers are out of control. But are drunk-driving laws out of control too? The old standard of .10 blood alcohol content has been lowered to .08 in most states. DC makes drunk-driving arrests for many drivers who clearly aren't drunk. Locales routinely violate 4th Amendment protections, and similar state-level protections, in the name of drunk-driving-laws enforcement. Profiling, which in the case of drunk-driving seems to target 22-year-old white dudes (at least that's how I saw it at 22 after being pulled over stone-sober four times in one week in Virginia), inconveniences the innocent exponentially more times than it apprehends the guilty. The machines that evaluate drunkenness are quirky, with new-and-improved models every few years replacing flawed versions that had nevertheless been used to convict drivers (most drunk, some not) in the past.

Defense attorney Lawrence Taylor outlines the limitations of Breathalyzers: "The computers inside Breathalyzers actually multiply the amount of alcohol in a DUI suspect's breath sample 2100 times to get the blood alcohol concentration ("BAC"). This is because it is programmed to assume that the suspect has 2100 units of alcohol in his blood for every unit of alcohol in his breath. This is called the "partition ratio". But this ratio is only an average: actual ratios vary from as low as 900:1 to as high as 3500:1; if individual ratio is different, the BAC result will be different. Translation: If a suspect has a true BAC of .06% ("not guilty") and a partition ratio of 1300:1, for example, the machine will give a result of .10% ("guilty"). Convicted by a machine. His crime? He was not average."

If you are average, you know someone who's been affected by drunk driving. With U.S. DUI arrests nearing 1.5 million annually, it's hard not to know someone convicted of drunk driving. This is particularly true of my (age, race, sex) demographic. If Shiva were a thirtysomething white guy, even he wouldn't be able to count on his fingers the number of friends convicted of DUI. Most of these offenders have never seen the inside of a courthouse save for their DUI arrests. One Marine I served with got arrested for DUI in Maryland for sleeping in his parked, unignited car because he did not wish to drink and drive. There is such a thing as overkill, even in pursuit of a noble end (i.e., roads free of inebriated drivers).

Those most radically affected by drunk-drivers are no longer with us. The sheer number of alcohol-related auto-fatalities demands that we, as a society, 1. lock-up drunk-drivers, but not drivers who blow a .03 on a Breathalyzer test. 2. Pull-over drivers suspected of drunkenness, but not drivers unlucky enough to be on a certain road at a certain time; 3. deny licenses to alcohol-impaired drivers, but not to people who have been accused--but the state has failed to convict--of driving under the influence.

Drink. Drive. But don't do both at once. Even a glass of wine at dinner, as Debra Bolton discovered, can land you in jail. She's no criminal. The law that put her under arrest is.

You might want to rethink the last paragraph. I was reading Radley Balko's blog (www.theagitator.com) and according to him, Texas has instituted a "zero tolerance" policy and are going after people drinking ... in bars. According to Balko, "People can also be arrested for public intoxication even if they have a designated driver."

Whaterver-- In the end, even with over-enforcement like this, TONS of people still drive drunk regularly, and it is deadly.

I heard about this on WTOP last night, and I was shocked at the statements made by the DC Government rep. He was addressing how hard it is to prosecute and build a case around such arrests (cuz, it ain't against the law, maybe?), and he said "Well, there's a big difference between arrest and prosecution". Noting that MOST people that are arrested under this policy "choose" to take a drunk driving awareness course to avoid court.

So let me get this straight. The DC Government is ordering its police to arrest people that have not violated the law, and bully them (under threat/hassle of prosecution) into taking some drunk driving course???

Am I the only one that is outraged at where this is headed?

I had no idea that the restrictions had gone this far in this matter. This does seem quite odd.

Matt, when did you start your site?

In the state of Virginia the breathalyzer cannot be admitted as evidence in any way, shape or form. It is something the police officer can use to determine if he will charge you with some other offense (reckless driving) or if he will tell you to get a ride home or not. So, you are not guilty if you fail miserably on the breathalyzer. It is the roadside tests, your conduct and your driving prior to the stop that determines your fate.
D.C. is just out of control all around.

Dan,

Thanks for drawing attention to this creeping prohibitionism in our land.

In Germany (yes, my usual point of comparison) drunken driving laws are very strict (get convicted, you will lose your license for up to four years on the first DUI), but convictions are for .08 or higher. And there's none of this subjective thing that's going around in DC...it's all regulated, heavily, who you can arrest and when.

Of course the tolerance may be lower because we have no speed limits in many places, and Germans love to drive fast, so drunk Germans are a bigger risk in some sense, I don't know.

But the sense I am getting from the U.S. is an increasing sense of intolerance to the point of arrest for things that were formerly seen as "foolishness" ... I'm not trying to suggest that drunk driving is one of those things - never should be - but you all are being ruled by a president who doesn't drink. So you shouldn't be surprised...