I recently interviewed Kent The Cop, a friend and colleague, on my Writers On The Beat podcast about drug impairment and behaviors. He’s a REALLY funny guy, but he somehow managed to keep everything above-board for most of the interview. As a massive DUI Hound, he has a lot of experience with those investigations and more hours talking with drunks than most bartenders. I thought you all might enjoy a recap of some short clips from Kent and me about our funniest DUI moments. Let the good times roll…
#1: “If Only Someone Had Told Him…”
As I mentioned in the podcast, one of my first DUIs wasn’t from booze, the driver was totally stoned on Seroquel, a common antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder/manic depression. He didn’t smell like alcohol, but he acted like he’d been drinking heavy all weekend. I probably stopped him sometime around midnight, maybe a little later, which is DUI Primetime. He agreed to complete the roadside maneuvers and I started him with the Walk And Turn, which is a simple thing to pass. Without getting bogged down in details, you just walk nine reasonably straight steps (heel-to-toe), turn around, and walk back the same way. He starts out and fails the thing about three steps into the first nine, gets to the midpoint, and stops. Dude’s standing there kinda like the end of The Karate Kid, his arms up for that Crane Kick. He wobbles in place for a couple seconds, then keeps his arms up and MOONWALKS back to his truck!! I wish bodycams existed back then! Best part of it was that he had his medication bottle in the truck. The bright orange warning label clearly advised against driving.
#2: “Nobody’s Perfect”
I stopped a guy for a whole lotta driving violations, pretty late at night as I recall. If there was ever a “routine” DUI, this would have been it. The driver reeks of booze, maybe he even had an open container in the car. I don’t remember now, but it seems that obvious in my mind. He agrees to get out of the car, stumbles, fails the roadside maneuvers terribly, and has to lean against his car for the final interview questions so he can stay upright and vertical. I know he’s going to jail that night, but I don’t think he did yet. One of the typical questions a lot of us ask invites the driver to rate their impairment from 0 to 10. 0 is totally sober, no impairment, and 10 is the most impaired you’ve ever been in your whole life. All this time, the driver’s been denying drinking ANYTHING, but one of the hallmarks of impairment is contradiction. It’s hard to keep your story straight with all that ethanol sloshing around inside your head. I ask him to rate his impairment, and he pondered the question for a bit, pushed himself back upright against the car, and calls out “Eight.” I asked why he was an eight if he hadn’t had any alcohol that night, and he shrugs his shoulders and says something like, “Nowhere near a ten. I gotta piss myself to score that high.”
#3: “These Aren’t My Pants.”
I responded to a Man Down call at a grocery store. It’s like, 2pm, August or July, way over 110 degrees, and there’s a dude laying in the gravel landscaping that won’t wake up. It turned out no one had tried REALLY HARD to wake up him, which kinda pissed me off for a few seconds until I got close to him. The guy’s wearing green plaid, flannel pajama pants and a wifebeater undershirt (are we still allowed to call them that? Not sure what the new PC name for that particular item might be. I digress…), and he STINKS like a Fecal Distillery. The thick brown streak starts at the back waistline and runs all the way down the back of both legs. He’s about 5’10”, so, for those playing along at home, that’s roughly six linear feet of fecal matter, never minding the width of the streaks or the volume that fell out somewhere nearby. Barf. Anyway, I used my favorite PR24 Nightstick to caress his sternum, which very soon revived him like Lazarus. I don’t remember any details about the how and why he ended up there, but I had to drive him 45 minutes across town to a detox facility, probably Mach 5 with all four widows down and my head out the window. Somewhere along the way, he shouts through the waffleboard partition. “Hey, off-ssurrr, I think somebody shit in my pants.” Yes, you’re right. Someone DID shit in your jammies, sir.
If you’d like to hear my Writers On The Beat podcast interview with Kent The Cop, you can link to it here:
gavinreese.com 
Funny! But sad.♥️✝️🐑✡️♥️
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