On the trail of drunken drivers
Posted on Tuesday, January 15, 2008
ROGERS - At 10 p.m. Friday, officer Brian Hanna technically changed hats. That was when he officially stopped working his regular patrol duties with the Rogers Police Department and began his overtime, funded by a Selective Traffic Enforcement Program grant. His focus was supposed to shift to finding and arresting drunken drivers, but he really was doing that all night.
Traffic was light for a Friday night - he thought it might have been because the weather had turned colder - but that left Hanna more room to pull a U-turn in the road and catch up to people he saw driving the other way.
Really, that's how he catches most drunken drivers. When he passes them, he said, they turn to watch, to see if they got away with it, and inevitably, they drift into the next lane. Then he sees it in his mirror. He's got them.
"A lot of my driving is out of this mirror," he said.
Early in the night, Hanna pulled over a few people he thought might be driving while intoxicated: a couple of people swerving, one that appeared to run a stop sign. He made a couple of arrests for failureto-appear warrants, but found no drunken drivers.
Hanna looked on the main roads, the side roads, even the parking lots.
He thought he found a drunken driver on Hudson Road, a car with NASCAR stickers in the rear window and two large coolers in the back seat. A headlight was out, enough reason to pull over the driver.
But the driver wasn't drunk, and the coolers didn't contain alcohol. They were full of milk samples. Another busted bust.
Shortly after 10 p. m., while Hanna was writing up a warning for a kid with a broken taillight, a call came in that took Hanna away from drunk drivers: a home invasion at 915 S. 25 th Place - all units respond.
He spun the car around quickly and sped to the location, first turning on the car's lights, then its siren. He wasn't the first officer there, so he found a spot where he could survey a large open area. Dispatchers relayed the description of the suspect, who had pushed past the woman as she opened the door - a thin white man, about 5 feet 10 inches, wearing blue jeans, a dark jacket, a blue bandana over his face and a black hat with black writing.
Minutes went by, and Hanna saw nothing. Police dogs arrived and also came up dry. Eventually, he returned to what he was doing.
At about 1: 30 a. m., Hanna got his first DWI - a car swerving, and its license plate did not match the vehicle. He got the driver, a 19-yearold male, out of the car and pulled out a flashlight.
With the light held high, Hanna held out his finger and floated it left and right, watching for pupil dilation in the suspect.
Next, Hanna asked the suspect to walk nine steps, heel to toe, then turn and walk back. He took the nine steps, stopped and then asked," And now turn ?"
For the last task, the suspect had to lift his leg and balance himself. It took a couple of tries, but he was able to complete the task.
After getting consent from the suspect, Hanna began to search him and the car. Hanna walked back to his patrol car and placed a colorful glass pipe on his vehicle's center console. After the next search, he placed a plastic bag filled with what appeared to be marijuana on the hood of the patrol car.
So was the suspect under the influence of anything ? "Just weed," Hanna said.
In the back seat of the squad car, his hands handcuffed behind his back, the suspect spoke in a voice barely audible above the engine, which was not loud. Hanna did understand one question the 19-year-old was asking. He was worried about the Xbox video-game system in his car. It wasn't his. It was rented. Hanna assured him the game system would be safe at the impound yard.
But the arrest wouldn't truly be for DWI. Hanna said the suspect was definitely impaired, but without a quantifiable level, such as blood-alcohol content, it would be difficult to prove the allegations. Hanna settled for charging the man with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, along with having fictitious tags on his car and driving without insurance. By then it was 2: 30 a.m. Hanna had been on duty for more than 12 hours.
With no drunken drivers under his belt that night, he went home, satisfied to find some the next time.
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