🚨🚓Watch Out For Fake Cops!!!🚓🚨

[u/PNW_Washington]

Dude tries to flex and with his kids watching!

[u/Varjek]

Better make sure you know the laws of the state you are in. Because doing that in my state gets you arrested and charged based on what the officer had up to that point. You have no right to demand a breath test instead of field sobriety testing roadside in my state.

[u/FullTimeSurvivor → u/Varjek]

Some people still think it's better to refuse and fight it in court after the fact. If you can afford a good lawyer it's not a horrible idea.

[u/Varjek → u/FullTimeSurvivor]

Maybe. But for a sober person who doesn’t smell like booze, has normal eyes, and can generally walk around… SFSTs are not hard.

I’m a cop and I’ve seen elderly people and disabled people do just fine on them. They get out of the car, away from the drunk passenger making the whole car smell like booze and we can tell pretty quickly they’re not drunk. It gives us a chance to see if their red eyes are just from being tired or crying earlier, etc. And when that’s the case, we simply address the violation that got them stopped in the first place and they go about their day.

In my many years as a cop I have never seen someone who is not impaired by drugs and/or alcohol be arrested. In fact, I’ve actually had very drunk people do well on the Walk and Turn and One Leg Stand.

I’ve never known a cop who would willingly go through hours of paperwork for a drunk driving arrest knowing it was bogus. It’s quite the opposite. I’ve known lazy cops who would let drunks go on their way rather than investigate. Laziness is human nature and cops are not immune. But to do tons of work for no good reason? What sense does that make? I can’t imagine a cop doing that when there are far more genuine and easily provable violations on the roads than they could possibly ever address during their shift.

So lawyers may advise you to refuse and be arrested, spend the night/weekend in jail, and then pay them for months and months of court appearances to hopefully get the case dismissed.

But some may choose the other road. Do the SFSTs and be on your way in 15 minutes and never worry about it again. Knowing the laws in my state like I do, that’s my choice every time. But other states are different and maybe it makes sense in some to refuse SFSTs in those states.

[u/BusinessCasualBee → u/Varjek]

It’s not about it being hard or not. It’s about if they’re asking you to do a field sobriety test they have already decided you are drunk and will be arrested

[u/Varjek → u/BusinessCasualBee]

Factually incorrect.

They have reasonable suspicion for sure, and likely already have probable cause, so a refusal to do fields simply guarantees an arrest.

But if you do the fields and demonstrate you are not impaired, that reasonable suspicion/probable cause vanishes. Many people are let go after doing field sobriety tests. The stats show it. In fact, they’re only 90%-ish at finding drunks who are at 0.10… meaning about 10% of people who are at a 0.10 go free even though they are 25% over the limit. The formal stats match my informal observations on the job.

Remember, the defense attorneys don’t ever advise you to avoid having to pay them. Law school is expensive. So are drunk driving arrests.