The car was speeding, weaving between the lanes, and then ran a red light. My other officers were busy, so I didn’t have immediately backup, but I didn’t think I could allow this car to drive away. I radioed the car stop and turned on my lights and the car pulled off the road into the parking lot of a convenience store, usually identified by a couple of rhyming numbers. As I positioned my car behind this one, I saw that there was a municipal police officer parked in the lot, report writing. He signaled me with four fingers, asking if I needed help. I signaled back with four fingers. I did not. If anything went wrong, the officer was right there. No problem.
I contacted the driver and he smelled of alcohol and showed all the regular signs and symptoms of being a driver under the influence. He also immediately shared with me that he was famous and that he was on his way to the airport and that we needed to make this go quickly, so he didn’t miss his flight.
I looked at my watch, just to double-check, but it was nearly 3 AM and the local airport operated on a curfew, no flights after 11:30 PM. Okay. I asked the standard questions about drinking and he had only had two drinks. I asked him to step out of the car so that we could go through some field sobriety exercises. I glanced over at the municipal officer and saw that he was watching me. I again gave him four fingers and he nodded.
My driver again reminded me that he was very famous and that I was delaying him needlessly. I agreed and apologized. I also apologized that I didn’t know who he was, after looking at his driver license and he explained that he was a professional dancer working for a very popular singer at the time and that they were flying out on the next Delta flight, so I needed to hurry.
Yes, sir.
But as I demonstrated the first field sobriety exercise, I got a petulant sigh from my driver that rivalled anything I heard from my own teenage children whenever I explained something they thought was stupid.
“This is ridiculous. If I was drunk, could I do this?” He then performed a complex dance move, stopped and waited for me to answer. None of my children took dance class, so I have no idea what the names of the various moves were. Had he been a cheerleader, I would have been able to identify the move for you.
“Sir,” I said, trying to keep his attention. “Please remember that following the instructions in part of the evaluation.” I then tried to demonstrate the field sobriety exercise again.
“Right, but could I do this?” And then came another complex dance move.
“Sir, are you going to perform the exercises that I’m going to demonstrate for you?”
“I’m not drunk. Look at this.” And then came another complex series of moves that began to make me nervous because he started to get too far away from me and I worried he might decide to run off into the night. But he stopped and again, waiting for me to agree that he couldn’t do that if he was drunk.
He appeared visibly intoxicated and just couldn’t bring himself to follow my instructions and perform the exercises. When he simply wouldn’t let me demonstrate the exercises for him, I told him that I was arresting him for driving under the influence and placed him in handcuffs. While I was taking custody of the driver, the municipal police officer drove up alongside and watched me as I placed the driver in the back seat of my patrol car.
He rolled down the window and looked at me shocked.
“Boy, you University guys’ tests are hard.”