I routinely see, read, or hear of instances of the abuses of government and unintended consequences of government overreach. I want to begin cataloging incidents in modern day incidents that amplify the overall point of my novel, Status Schmo. I would encourage all to resist the urge to consider them nothing but anecdotes or anomalies.
Yesterday, a friend told me about an incident with one of her friends and co-workers. When she was finished describing the incident, my first thought was, her friend is indeed, Joe Schmo. I will leave out her real name for obvious reasons and use a fictitious one. The following are the facts as they were described to me.
Jane works at Fort Knox as a civil servant. Her position requires a secret clearance. Her and her husband have own a small piece of property on the Ohio River in Meade County, Kentucky. They use this property for recreation. On Saturday, June 14, 2018, they were enjoying a day of boating with friends on their pontoon boat. During the day, many of their friends joined them on the boat at various times. At the end of the day, they used a nearby public boat ramp to retrieve their boat. What happened next is a near perfect example of the abuse of law enforcement.
Jane’s husband stayed in the boat while she backed a trailer down the ramp using their truck. As soon as she exited the vehicle, she was approached by a Fish and Wildlife officer who questioned her and her husband about alcohol use. They told him that they had been drinking beer. Keep in mind, operating a boat with intoxicated is illegal. He found approximately a dozen empty beer cans on the boat. They explained to him that they did not drink them all. They were the cans used by all parties that joined them on the boat earlier in the day. The officer then required Jane’s husband to take a breathalyzer test. The result was 0.5. According to law, you cannot legally operate a car or a boat if your blood alcohol content is 0.08 or above.
According to Jane, finding that her husband was not boating while intoxicated, the officer appeared agitated. Then he required that Jane take the breathalyzer test as well. Her result was 0.09. They still had not gotten the boat fully on the trailer at this point. The officer then instructed Jane to pull the truck up out of the ramp. Then he arrested her for driving under the influence, claiming that driving on a public ramp was no different than driving on the public roads. This was after he instructed her to drive the truck off the ramp. So, one has to wonder, if Jane was a such a danger to society while backing the trailer up, why did he instruct her to pull the trailer out? If this had been a driver on a road and the officer suspected the driver was drunk, should he instruct the driver to move the car? Doubtful.
Jane spent the entire night in the Meade County Jail. She was released on her own recognizance the following morning. She was charged with DUI. She had not been driving the boat. Her husband was. Her only offense was backing a trailer down a boat ramp.
Aside from the fact that the wildlife officer was using poor judgement is the real problem here. He was clearly more interested in making an arrest than surveying the situation to determine if an arrest was warranted. He was belligerent, rude, and overly aggressive. He would not allow her husband to drive the truck from the boat ramp to their property, even though he was well under the legal limit for intoxication. The officer told him he would have to walk. The officer had no authority to do this, but Jane’s husband used common sense and avoided causing the officer further agitation or perhaps a violent outcome and arrest himself.
Because Jane has a secret security clearance, she is subject to losing her job because of a DUI conviction (assuming she is convicted). An entire family’s reputation and income is at stake here. All because an over-zealous wildlife officer, who clearly wants to exert his authority.
It’s fairly clear what happened here. The officer was hoping to arrest Jane’s husband, but when he found he wasn’t drunk, he felt slighted and chose to arrest Jane on a trumped up charge of DUI for backing a trailer down the boat ramp.
One would think that to overcome the increasingly bad reputation of law enforcement, officers would take more care in the way they behave themselves when on duty. It’s not like they need to invent crimes. It would be just as easy to have observed this situation, recognize that he made a mistake, and simply walk away. Instead, he chose to do otherwise and make a fool of himself, while endangering the career of a woman that has no history of criminal activity. Shame on you Mr. Wildlife Officer. Shame on you.