Delta Review; 6; Chief Kevin Clayton

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But just how serious in the bush is drinking and driving presently. Well, we have, I can speak to Bethel, the Bethel City area. We do all the unfortunate traffic enforcement within the city limits and on the river in the winter and in the summer with boats. And it's any number of drunk drivers is serious, but last year in 1985, for instance, we arrested the Bethel Police Department, arrested 86 people for drunk driving. Either on the river or on the city streets, which I haven't checked ratios for our size or bigger per capita, but personally I would think that's rather high for a small town like Bethel. I was going to say that seems rather high compared to big city like Anchorage or something like that and per capita numbers anyway. Yeah, I really don't know per capita numbers and stuff, but it's enough to keep us real busy with drunk drivers.

What I know a lot of people are confused also when they read the newspaper reports and whatnot a person that's been picked up for drinking and driving. What is the difference between DUI and DWI? Okay, in Alaska, some states it's OMBI and DUI and DWI, but in Alaska it's called DWI, driving while intoxicated. There's a couple different ways of charging a person who's arrested for driving while intoxicated like different counts. For instance, you can arrest someone for just driving while intoxicated, which is the law reads, no matter how much you've had to drink, if you're under the influence and your ability to drive the car impaired, you can be arrested for it. You can still be arrested. You can still be arrested for DWI. The legal blood alcohol limit in the state is 0.10. If you have a blood alcohol more than 0.10,

you're considered intoxicated by the law. Now, there's another charge under DWI that allows the police to charge you with a second count. For instance, you drill while under the influence and you drill with a blood alcohol over 0.10. The reason they have those two is because sometimes you'll have a drunk driver who is a very tolerant drinker who drinks all the time. And he may have a blood alcohol of 0.15 or 0.2, but he's pretty stable on his feet. He can walk a straight line. He can talk coherently. He has some signs of intoxication. And it's hard to... I mean, he does very well on the sobriety test. It feels sobriety test if the officer gets in the field or the sobriety test in front of the video camera at the station. But he's driving a bill. He's a still impaired. His judgment and his brain functions are still impaired.

So the state developed another charge under DWI, which, a person like that, you can charge DWI drove with a blood alcohol of 0.10. Now, the other charge, just driving while on toxic air, drove while under the influence. You could be arrested for that if your blood alcohol, let's say, is a 0.05 below the legal limit. But you're not a tolerant drinker. You haven't filled up a resistance to alcohol. And if you drink a beer or two and have a blood alcohol of 0.05, you may not be able to stand up where the tolerant drinker can't and walk and do the test correctly. OK. For an average person to become legally drunk at a 1.0 alcohol level, say for an average person, 150 pounds, five foot, eight, whatever, five foot, nine. How many drinks is that?

What are we talking about? I used to be really up on that. And no, through classes I've taken. Well, just in our approximation. I believe it states, I believe they say that two or three drinks will certainly get you to legal limit, depending on how far apart you drink those. If you drink a couple of drinks that has, say, one ounce of liquor in that drink, in an hour, your blood alcohol is going to rise real fast. The deal is that your body will accept alcohol. A lot faster than it will relieve you of alcohol. Disappate the alcohol. So that's where people get in trouble. The more they drink, the faster they drink, not allowing their body to dissipate the alcohol. It builds up and builds up and builds up a lot faster. I remember reading somewhere. I can't place it, but I remember one other time that I've seen a story on this, that the body dissipates alcohol

in the average person, something like one ounce every hour. Yeah, I believe so. It's like they figure like one drink an hour. You know? You lose your body can handle it. I would think you drink a one drink, an ounce drink, one hour before you should really drink another one, so to keep your blood alcohol down, it would probably be an hour and a half, two hours later because it takes that hour to get that first drink in your system and hour to get it out. All right, if you space yourself at, do I say, get out of the social gatherings and stuff and drink with some common sense, you really wouldn't have that problem. Okay, and detecting and a drunk driver on the road. Let's take it through a short scenario from the time that your officer in the patrol car pulls up or sees someone doing weaving or whatever to the prosecution. Let's go through the whole thing. What exactly for the people out there that have not ever been? Fortunately, I've ever been picked up.

What exactly happens? Well, the officers look for several things. When they're during a routine patrol, the obvious thing people would think that he's looking for someone who's speeding, who's driving real fast. Well, that's not necessarily the case all the time. We look for people that are driving slower than the normal. Trying to be careful. Trying to be too careful. Who hasn't at their start? Say at a stop sign or a traffic light, they'll stop. And then the light will change. They'll think about going, but then they won't go, but then they'll go start and stop, driving with their lights off, making wide turns or short turns. And then, of course, weaving from side to side on the roadway is the obvious. So, let's say the officers are out, and they see someone like that. Right then, they say that, well, he has a problem. There's a problem here. It may not be DWI.

Maybe a mechanical problem. Maybe the person's fatigued, and then been driving all day and not very falsely. But anyway, they follow the car, and they observe it. They start establishing their probable cause for the arrest at that time. They say, okay, the car, weaved across the road, across the center line, two or three times, or he made a jerky stop, or he didn't signal, or whatever. So, once they decide they're going to stop the car, just to see what the problem is, it stopped. They pick a safe place on the roadway, hopefully, where they're very visible, and they stop them. As they're approaching the car, they're looking for things, too. They're watching the movements of the people in the car. When they come to the window, they address the driver, and they're watching. They're observing. They're smelling. They're looking, and they watch for anything the person they do. He may fumble over his driver's license a few times, and when he's asked for them,

right then you can be able to make a pretty good observation of his looks, if his eyes are bloodshot and watery, his nose red, his speech is slurred. That all adds up to more probable cause for driving. Then, if they suspect, this person is drinking, they'll ask them to step out of the vehicle and perform some variety tests on the roadway. This is where they were touching the nose. Right. Where they ask them to walk a line, heal the toll, ask them, maybe to touch their nose, do some balance test, do some speech tests. I'll ask them to recite their ABCs. Maybe ask them to count from one to twenty, and then from twenty back to one to see what their alcoherent they are. Okay. So, the person fails it. Or let's say he gets to that point, and the person's done pretty well on all these sobriety tests, your observations,

maybe you smell the slight odor of alcohol, it doesn't look real or drunk. Recently, in the last few years, the state develops some more laws and some more equipment and it's a portable breath testing device that the officers that's pocket sized, they carry it right in their pocket. I believe they established the reason behind that was to catch those point one to point, point one five drunk drivers who are legally drunk. Their judgment's obviously impaired, but it's hard to detect. It's a close call. Right. So, at the end of all these sobriety tests, if they've got still got some questions in their mind, they don't want to arrest obviously, and in this person, they'll ask them to blow into this portable breath testing device, where it gives you a reading right out there on the field what the person is. He blows into it, he blows over a point one all, then that just kind of cinches his probable cause at the scene, and where he'll detain the person. If the person refused to blow,

that was my next question. If he refuses to blow in that instrument, that he can get a uniform traffic citation for that. It's an infraction of the law to... The law does require you to take it. It requires you to take it at it's an infraction, not a misdemeanor, but an infraction or a traffic violation, not too blowing, not too. Okay. So, let's say the person has done poorly, the breath test device says he's got to be over point one all. The officer, Lataney, and transporting through the police station. Okay. At the police station, he's taken to a room where we have video cameras, um, uh, in talk seminers, which is our breath test instrument. And we do the same or similar sobriety tests again, on camera, to present to the jury later, on or the judge later on, so they can see what the person looks like at that time, at the time of the arrest. The person's asked to do these tests.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Once that's finished, then he's asked to submit to an in talk similar test. This is a bigger machine, that's obviously not portable, that the state just developed that program about two and a half or three years ago. Um, I purchased new instruments and sent people through training and got them online. Uh, that will give us another blood alcohol, uh, reading from .001 on up. The, um, now, let's say the person refuses to blow on that. That's a misdemeanor crime, to refuse to blow on an in talk similar. Um, so, kind of got you coming or going, you know. That sounds like, right. Right. Uh, that's another charge.

If you refuse to blow on the in talk similar, then you're charged with a second count. I refuse to submit to a chemical test. What normally happens, uh, just get off a little bit if, uh, convicted, of course, if you've refused to blow into it, that's obviously you're in the wrong. Uh, what is a normal, uh, finer sentence on something like that of? Uh, I believe, well, the, the, uh, the penalties and the sentences for DWI and, and for refusing to submit to a, uh, a chemical test are the same. It's like three days in jail, the first, the first conviction. Mm-hmm. And a $250 fine. Uh, second time around, it's higher, like, uh, maybe I think it's like a thousand dollar fine. Uh, 10 days in jail, or 20 days in jail, and it just goes up progressively a third time and say, I think it's, they have a time up right five, five years to get, they get real stiff. They can take your vehicle, they can put you in jail for a year, uh,

take your license forever. Mm-hmm. So, they're, they're pretty hard. The last guy I know has one of the, the hardest, or the most severe, or strict DWI laws in the, in the United States. There are other states that are comparable, and this guy is right up there on top as far as, but it's a variety of penalties and stuff. And then once, uh, once you, uh, get, let's say he takes a breathalyzer test. Mm-hmm. Okay, where does he go from there? Well, after he takes a breathalyzer test, then the officers, uh, they preserve a sample. There are some tubes and things that you hook to the breathalyzer, or the antoximeter, which purges the breath from the cells or from the chamber and the instrument through it, which there's pure chlorate, I believe they call it a chemical crystals in the tube, which grabs onto the alcohol and holds it. Theoretically, you should be able to later have that analyzed in the lab, and that's your second breath test, and to confirm what the instrument told you. Uh,

however the states, I believe still have some problems with that, or just still trying to develop it, so we offer them an independent blood test. We ask that we read them a form and ask them if they would like to have another, a blood test for their own use to send off, and have analyzed. If they say yes, we call the bedics, or take them to the hospital, or the EMTs, and they come over and they'll draw blood from them. We retain that blood, and they have to give us an address of a lab of their choice, a reputable lab of their choice, and we'll send it off at a later date. So all this is finished. All there's some forms, there's some questions that are asked. You read your rights. You know, you don't have to answer any questions, obviously. You know, you have the same rights as anyone else being arrested. The opportunity to call your lawyer all this. Once all that's completed, then the person is transported to the jail, where they're booked for the appropriate charge, DWI, who feels to submit whatever, whatever the crime may be.

Maybe some other crimes. Maybe he had a traffic accident when he had this. That's another big clue that there's something wrong with the person's driving. We respond to a lot of traffic accidents, where the driver has been drinking. And now there's some real unique laws on that. Normally in the state, police officers can't arrest a person for a misdemeanor, a crime, unless it's committed in their presence, or someone else places them under a citizen's arrest. DWI is an exception to that rule. If the officers respond to a traffic accident, the driver says, not there. And obviously the traffic accident has happened. The person's out of his vehicle. So you don't really know who's driving. If you can develop probable cause within eight hours after the accident that a person was driving and he was intoxicated while driving it, you can arrest. It's obviously not being committed in your presence. The accident happened before you got there. Unlike a normal DWI, that's a misdemeanor being committed in your presence, or certainly you can arrest him for that. What is the... Do you have any statistics,

what the conviction, what your conviction rate is? Not really. I try to get with a district attorney's office, and they've got their computer system taking some time to get that information out. I assume it would be fairly high though. I believe so. We don't go to trial a whole lot on DWI's in Bethel. We have a few trials, but not nearly as many DWI trials as we arrest DWI's. Sometimes the charges are reduced to maybe reckless driving or something like this, and the person pleads out. But I would guess that the conviction rate is fairly high. It seems that also in drunk driving, we've been talking basically about cars or trucks, and it seems that you've been reading more about drunk drivers on either ATVs. Here not too long ago there was one in a plane that had a crash, and killed some people, snowmobiles, whatever.

How bad is that problem? Very bad. I'd say it's balanced pretty even as far in Bethel, as far as people driving intoxicated on snow machines, three-wheelers, four-wheelers, boats. I think it's pretty well balanced. It's a pretty even spread. For one other words, we catch as many on. I would think we catch as many on snowmobiles as we do in cars and pickups, and it's against a law in Alaska to drive any motorized vehicle while intoxicated, wherever you are. We've arrested people on the river, driving their boats in the summertime, driving while intoxicated. We've arrested people on the river in the winter with their snow machines. We've arrested people on the winter on the streets of Bethel, and there's snow machines in their three-wheelers, or driving while intoxicated. I can't recall the Bethel Police Department since I've been here last five, six years, arresting anyone driving an airplane, but that has happened around the state, flying airplanes while intoxicated.

I know it's happened in Anchorage, just not too many months ago. There was a person caught it right after he landed there. They got him. One other interesting thing about DWI arrest is juveniles, people that are in there 18 years old, they're arrested, and the same procedures for a juvenile are used as used for an adult for an adult. They're summonsed or sighted into district court or whatever. Under that traffic charge, they're requested to blow on intoxicated and do the whole thing, and we arrest a few juveniles for DWI. I know although it doesn't pertain specifically to Bethel, because Bethel is what I consider unique and it's liquor laws, but around the state I know in several communities, the bar owners and the

liquor places have taken a step to help keep people off the road, in particular it started in Valdez, and it moved to Palmer and now it's the entire Mansu Valley. And the people have, it's under the various names, depends upon where you go, but safe rider, friendly, rider program. There's a number of more of the liquor establishments, take it upon themselves, and they actually send their bartenders to schools to determine or how to spot a person that's had too much to drink. And the bars have taken upon themselves, either cut the person off or take away their car keys. If they do this, they give them a free ride home and a taxi cab, next morning bring them back, free of charge. And I talked to one, one of the gentlemen that helped set this up in the Mansu Valley, and he said in his bar alone in the last New Year's Eve

that there were seven cars that never left his parking lot. A hundred New Year's Eve, but what do you think of this type of a program? Well, I think it's great, and I know it's, I'm not real clear on the laws in that respect, but I believe that there are some charges that proprietors of bars and liquor stores and things like that can be charged with for allowing a person to become intoxicated in their establishment leave the facility and then have an accident. But I think that's great that they've taken upon themselves to help in that. It does help in that matter. I know when I talk to the state troopers and Palmer and ask them if they had seen Chrissy, it's only been going on a few months. And they said, there's not enough time yet to be, you know, the compile statistics yet it's going to take quite a while. But he said at least did that get that amount or that number of people off the road? That's great. And he said also the fact that it's hard, you know, that's one thing I wanted to ask you is how do you stop a person from driving after you know

he's too intoxicated I know the cliche that they used on a lot of PSA spots that were put out a friend stole that friend's drive drunk and I know the state troopers here in Alaska have a brand new ad that they're running on TV currently. I'm driving while intoxicated. But from what the trooper and Palmer told me he said that the person which to me is hard to take, but he said a person is determined to drive after he's going to drive anyway. Well, that's hard for me to take, but what can you do if you have a friend if you're at your house or whatever? They've been drinking and you know he shouldn't get out there on that road. Driving home yourself if you're sober. Take his car keys. I mean, it's deadly. You know, it's a serious situation. I know if I ever have dinner or gatting at my house and somebody say may over and holds you a little bit.

I mean, it's your responsibility as much as it's theirs. I mean, to make sure that person doesn't go out on a street and drive. Take their car keys. Do anything short of assaulting them and they keep them from moving. Ask them to stay. Give them a place to stay for the night. Call them a cab. But I know there are some people that just say hey, that's I can drive. I'm fine. Everything. So I don't know. I mean, call the police for assistance if you have to. You know, if you get a friend who you really care about or if that you don't care about for that matter. And he's going to drive drunk and you know what? you can do to stop and call us. In Bethel, especially we'd be glad to come and talk to that person. And we'd certainly have a probably more influence over them than you would. We wouldn't come in arrest them. We wouldn't have anything to arrest them for, but we would rather come and start there and start over the road where they've serious accident and maybe hurt somebody themselves

whatever. Well, you know, I worked up a scenario before we came in here today of an accident involving a drunk driver and a sober driver. And assuming there was only one injury driver, and he had to be metavacked anchorage. assuming there was injury in this and that he had to be metavacked to anchorage. I came up with a minimum of people directly involved with that accident. And doctors medics, police officers, lawyers, courts, everything. There's another law and I'll ask I might tell you about two in reference while intoxicated when you have and when there's a person injured other than the, the, the driver, the driver. The police can blood consent. You know, if you refuse if you refuse, we can take it search warrant consent. That's

if there's accident and someone's other than you. Well, listen, Chief, I'd like to thank you for being on our program. Sure. And I hope the viewers as I have learned something from this program. And as I said, a cliche that you have been done. Thank And we're to cut And sorry about that, Chuck. I'm all I need to Chuck the ending on next week's Delta review. So actually it's going to do a spot to promote this this spot next week. No.

On next Delta we will focus in a very topic Alaska natives, 1991 guest be Irwin Alaska Foundation hope you'll be here for the year shot on this week's review be Bethel's Clayton will be at law enforcement side drunken and affects on community very insight how local view very serious problem this uh .

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