Warning for Texas Drunks
State on the lookout for overly drunk bar patrons
Some more info on the crackdown... .17 is pretty darned drunk...

Well- I guess this will also cut down onthe number of hookups based on beer goggle syndrome... :( /me makes note to never go to texass again... :D

thanks mal---i kinda sensed something like this...the logic of working to reduce drunk driving gets extended, following on some moralizing logic, to other "bad decisions"--yay---i think the state should take this all the way---all bad decisions should be pre-empted....

falling unwittingly for a real estate scam?---no problem----because bad investments lead to bad outcomes lead to shock and disappointment leads to drinking as medication leads to drunk driving and other bad things, arrest the investor before the contract is signed. another life saved...

a girl is preparing to break up with her boyfriend, using the "its not you its me" line-well, you know how that goes----so arrest her...

a graduate student is preparing for master's exams and is really feeling the pressure and decides to join up with friends to blow off some steam--o no, another bad potential situation--luckily, texas law enforcement can see into the future and so the arrest on the street outside his apartment was logical....


i am never---ever----going to texas.

Preemptive arrests are illegal since no crime has ben committed.

So you write a law that makes it legal. You are guilty of public drunkeness. It's no longer a preemtive arrest.

So, then how long is it until we're guilty of driving(we might speed or drive recklessly)? Or how long until owning a knife or gun is crime(since that may aid us in harming another individual)? Normally I don't buy into slippery slope arguments but I think on this one you almost have to.

The whole idea of a law supporting arresting people for being drunk to prevent drunk driving and other alcohol related crimes rests on it being factual that you cannot be drunk without driving drunk or committing an alcohol-related crime - which I have personally witnessed to not be the case more than a few times.

To make it a crime to be in a position capable of commiting a crime is ludicrous.

This whole debacle is nothing more than producing revenue for the state. This 'raid' has been all over the local talk radio and news channels. the TABC aren't arresting people that are falling down drunk, they are arresting people who might be talking loudly, slurring some words, or even looking like they can't walk straight. All of this is done without any blood or breath tests. The fines for these are $100 to $500 for patrons and they can go up to $15,000 for the bar owners. The people of texas are getting hopping mad about this and you can bet that if it gets back to Rick Perry ordering this or even encouraging it, it's gonna get ugly. right now, the TABC is hammering the media left and right to make sure that they put in every story exactly what the law says in order to justify this action. This isn't any different than the police writing 3x the tickets in a given period to produce revenue.

Until that hypothetical law is passed, these are illegal practices. There is a latin term that escapes me that says you can't be prosecuted for a crime that was committed before the law was passed, I can't remember it. I believe the englishg translation is "after the fact" or something. If there is no CURRENT law against being drunk in a bar, then they can't do anything about it until there is a law passed. While I personally frown upon drunkenness anywhere, I frown more on liberties being trampled on.

Edit: if there is anyone out there that has been a victim of this, contact a lawyer. You will win and save a lot of buzzed people from ridiculous fines from tyranical governmental organizations. If they tried to fine me, I'd refuse to pay. Peaceful civil disobedience is my middle name.

The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.


Pre-Crime strikes again.

I have said this a thousand times, the people that write laws are, for the most part, idiots. They are reactionary in their law making and poor in the choice of verbage in the law, which makes it easy for the law to be abused/mis-applied. I doubt that the intent of the laws for public intoxication were to arrest people drunk in a bar. Nor was it intended, I suspect, to arrest someone for what they might do upon leaving the bar. I suspect it was intended to keep people from passing out on street corners, thusly making the town an undesireable place to work/live/shop. But, in this puritan and extremist world we are now living in what are you going to do. Now, if these people were creating a nuisance, they should have been arrested for that rather than the public intoxication.

In that town I live in, a ten year old was arrested for riding his bike uptown last year. I'm sure that law was written to prevent skateboarders (I have nothing against them al long as they're curtious) from hanging out infront of businesses and creating a nuisance uptown. But, the way the law was written it was illegal to be on a bike or a skateboard anywhere in the downtown area. He was going uptown to pick up something from the store for his dad, and he got arrested (hand cuffed and driven to the police station in the back of a squad car). The police are not paid to interpret the laws, they are paid to enforce them. But, it does tend to clog up our legal system if people are being arrested for things like this.

That's deep.

How convenient, criminalize something that harms nobody, the arrest people for violating the new law. 50/50 on whether its' about "morality" or money.

How many convictions for sodomy occurred prior to Lawrence vs. Texas?

I've tried twice to type up a reasonable response here, but it just isn't coming. So here is my gut reaction:

If it makes it even a little less likely that bartenders will be serving people until they get drunk, or removes a few potential drunk drivers off the road, it's cool with me.

Of course, I think a person should lose their car, lose their liscense for a year, and spend a month in jail for a first drunk driving offense, and lose their liscense permanently and go to jail for six months on a second offense, so I'm not one to look to for sympathy here.

Gilda

It's all well and good to talk about stopping people from driving, but I keep thinking about the guy who didn't drive, or has a designated driver.

Why should *anyone* care if he gets drunk.

I'll read this as democrats for and republicans against. It looks like its as I suspected and all about the money :)

Please don't judge the whole state by this law. Like any other place (probably more so), we like to kick back a few cold ones. The only problem is that we also have a lot of churchies. These fucking do-gooders always want to stick their noses where they don't belong.

The religious right takes my beer and the liberals take my guns... so I am a libertarian.

Who's taking your beer again?

Wow, people are pissed off by the state enforcing the law. If the legislature wants to rewrite that law, then fine, but death threats to the folks enforcing it? Seriously.

how do you enforce that? That would put half of this country behind bars.

Dude, calling police officers "pigs" is sooooo 50 years ago. Ya'll need to come up with a better word.

If the police can articulate why they suspected that you were drunk, you were probably acting like an ass and were obviously intoxicated. Inside of a bar or outside on the street--- It doesn't make a difference.

Now, now, dksuddeth, I know that you and the rest of the gun nuts are chomping at the bit for the revolution to begin, but you can't start your "re-education" camps just yet.... :D

/deliberately misreading

To answer the question - you don't. By doing exactly what they're already doing, the TABC is forcing the bars to do a better job of self-policing, which they should be doing anyway. One of the parts of this story that keeps getting glossed over, mainly because it really doesn't qualify as "news", is that the TABC is ticketing the establishments for overserving people and serving minors. If the bar knows that they're going to get in trouble for overserving, which is against the law by the way, they aren't going to do it.

sorry i didnt read the entire thread so i dont know if this has already been brought up... but from what i understand it is illegal to be drunk in a bar and it's illegal for a bar to get you drunk. nutty

what they are actually doing is discouraging people to even be at a bar.

http://www.nbc5i.com/news/8313414/detail.html

I'm betting that this will get swept away very quickly, lest it hurt Perrys chances at re-election.

dksuddeth...that's interesting that out of state people are in on the uproar. way i see it, it's a chance for the people to legislate via their buying practices. boycott and economic re-direction is an excellent way to nullify an attempt to legislate something.

just ask the brits.

DK, this is beginning to be a "to-may-to/to-mah-to" debate. I think that they're encouraging bars to make sure that they don't overserve anyone. You think that they're discouraging people to drink in bars. What they're doing is making sure that people don't get drunk in bars. Can we agree on that? If the two of us go to our favorite Dallas watering hole and have a couple of beers apiece over a couple of hours and the TABC walks through, we're fine (unless you're acting "erratic" by spouting off about gun rights and the impending revolution :D ). Now if we pound down 10 shots each in 10 minutes, we're going to have a problem. And you know what, the bar shouldn't have served us since that's dangerous for us and those around us (especially whoever sitting near me, since I promise that I'd puke under these circumstances).

Let me get this straight - when it comes to guns, you don't want the government to pass any new laws but just enforce the ones on the books. However, when it comes to drinking, you don't want them to enforce the ones on the books but write new ones instead. Alcohol kills more people in the US than all the guns worldwide (ok, I made that stat up, but I'll be its close). If I overserve you at a party at my home and you go out and kill someone while driving, I'm potentially liable as the server. There's a reason to enforce the laws.

Not quite. I said we don't need any more laws IF they would enforce the ones that are already there. I, personally, think that they should actually do away with a few of them.

Not quite again. If TABC hits up a bar and they find people falling down drunk, I have no problem with them citing/arresting them. I do have a problem if they hit a hotel bar and arrest people that are staying AT the hotel. Thats a far cry from a more realistic 'wanting to stop drunk driving so we raided hooters' type of argument.

agreed, see my statement above. Again, if they hit up hooters or champs or the local strip club, fine. When you roust hotel patrons at the hotel bar who have no plans to go anywhere, thats an issue.

I agree with Willravel (and journeyman [?])...How can it *possibly* be legal to arrest someone when a crime Has Not Been Committed?

Why can't the agents sit in the parking lot and see how many apparently drunk folks get in the car and start it up, thereby pretty much proving their intent?

And raiding hotel bars, that's just the STUPIDEST thing I can possibly imagine. Why don't they start raiding folks indulging in the hotel room's minibars?!? Come, on, it's not that far off from the Hotel's bar.

Any how about arresting drunks for assault and battery, molesting poultry, and the myriad of other crimes that often take place under the influence?

I think that's the point of this new tactic - preventative maintenance. We all know that drunks do some stupid things, and if you're not allowing them to get out of control, then you theoretically keep a lid on the stupidity.

As far as a crime not being committed, I'm afraid that you're wrong. The bars are certainly overserving these folks, and that's against the law. The individuals in question are drunk in a public establishment. That's against the law as well. If you don't like the law, then get it changed.

Obviously I don't know the whole story, but I'll wager that the hotel bar in question has a history of either overserving patrons or serving underage patrons. Having been to many a hotel bar in my day, I can tell you that I've certainly been overserved in some and that I've done some considerable damage afterwards (my apologies Airport Hilton of Minneapolis for leaving a steaming pile of something in a stairwell on a bet). I'll agree that a hotel bar is an unlikely place for habitually overserving people but the Bi-Lo on Sutherland Avenue in Knoxville, TN was an unlikely place to sell beer to kids from a private school 10 miles away. That didn't stop it from happening.

Goddamn, that must be some good crack you are smoking.

If Dallas is anything like Los Angeles (near where I live), then a lot of dance clubs and bars are inside hotels. They are open to the street and the public, it's not like a bar lounge for the occupants. These are part of the night life.

Also, at the club I work at the servers have to cut off the men when they've had too much. If the vice squad comes into my club, then they would ticket the bartender for serving too much alcohol. It was like this in Oregon (where I grew up), too. Oh, and you can't buy liquor in supermarkets or on Sundays in Oregon, either. I bet it's against the law to overserve people everywhere and that this just became a big issue out of something that has already been law for a long time. And I don't go to bars to get drunk, but to hang out and have some fun.

I agree, this is another one of those silly laws dealing with alcohol that states pass from time to time that should be changed.

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you there. It should not be legal for anyone to get falling down drunk in a bar, and the bars that do it should be penalized. Alcohol is fine in moderation, but it's poisonous and overconsumption can cause death, among other things. Drunks have notorious poor impulse control, and they also rarely realize how drunk they are. Having provided insurance for some establishments that habitually overserve patrons, I can confirm that drunks do drive and they also do other things that place themselves and others in danger, like riding on top of elevators, get in fights and drop things on people, just to name a few of the claims I have been involved in.

I get your point, I guess we are looking at this from different angles. I think the quote you reference by Benjamin Franklin applies here and I suppose you think otherwise. With designated drivers and such, not everyone who drinks too much should be subject to arrest. I especially do not like the idea that low paid servers should be responsible for determining how much liquor their patrons can hold, some people can handle much more than others.

it looks like the program has been suspended, at least temporarily...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3791210.html

10:25 PM---they just suspended all bar checks until the legislature does a review on Monday...

of coarse they have already issued tickets to 2200 people for being drunk---even when they had a designated driver....

more on this later....

Wait... The Texas legislature is going to do something? :rolleyes: I don't believe it.

Okay this just seams so very wrong to me, catching some one before they actually break a law. If the Owner or operator of a bar has a problem with you then they call the police. If not then they keep sucking up your money. You should be a "responsible" adult and either not drink too much or have some one there to take care of you if you do i.e. your DD. This eliminates the need for the police to come in and judge by there own standards (I found nothing that shows they have a set standard of drunk).

Now if the Police want to hang out outside of a bar and watch if your stumbling butt gets into your car and starts it up then cool. Once the car is started you intended to drive drunk and they grab you. You now started to commit a crime. This whole grabbing people drinking in bars is crap.

If only 30 people got arrested from 36 bars that were checked, I don't see what the problem is. Every bar has their drunk jackass causing problems, and they usually get the cops called on them anyhow.

http://www.nbc5i.com/news/8798212/detail.html

so, the texas legislature is telling the offending agency to police itself and change its ways. God, I love america. :|

Of course it comes from a higher authority, but I don't think that makes it right. I don't think it's as much the fault of the arresting officer so much as the Chief of Police or someone else who's influential and has a vested interest in this enforcement. The cops have to do it or they'll get fired, but if *all* officers felt it was unjust enforcement, I think the collective dissent would put a halt to it pretty quickly.

Police departments choose to enforce what they want more stringently or passively for many different reasons. I sure hope this particular reason isn't just to increase revenue (but I'm sure that's one of the driving factors). Usually it's just a very few people who have the power and decide to put selectively-enforced programs like this into place. Like the Police Chief, Mayor, Governor, President, and assorted influencial rich folks. It's definitely revenue-driven, but that's probably (hopefully) not the only reason why they're doing this.

Similarly, a while back my county department had a "Seatbelt Challenge" where officers were rewarded for pulling over the most people who aren't wearing seatbelts. They don't do that anymore; It was selective enforcement only during that period of time -- now they probably won't pull you over just for not wearing a seatbelt unless they were hunting for PC. I knew a few people who got pulled over during that time, and I haven't heard of anyone getting pulled over just for that since the program ended. In my mind, that was just as silly as this bullshit operation.

My thoughts exactly. Though, the whole "they were ordered to do it for a revenue stream" seems pretty likely too. Bunch o' crap.