Texas busting drunks ... in bars
Quote:
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) -- Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said Wednesday.
The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission's Carolyn Beck.
Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.
The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.
"We feel that the only way we're going to get at the drunk driving problem and the problem of people hurting each other while drunk is by crackdowns like this," she said.
"There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they're intoxicated, other than get behind the wheel of a car," Beck said. "People walk out into traffic and get run over, people jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss."
She said the sting operations would continue throughout the state.
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Seems rather like shooting fish in a barrel and takes the sport out of catching drunks to me.
A person does not have a constitutional right to be drunk, however, this law seems to me a way to prevent things that MIGHT happen rather than what actually does happen.
I'll be the first person in line to suggest a person be drawn and quartered for driving drunk, but being drunk in a bar, well, that might be annoying, but it hardly seems illegal... Yes, they might run into traffic, or scale a fence and drown in a swimming pool, but they also could just entertain the masses with their idiocy...
for you texas residents, what sayeth you... would this prevent you from going out and getting drunk... Will this law do any good at all?