And the FReepers find her.... |
Guilty as charged.
Posted on 06/13/2015 7:52:10 AM PDT by SamAdams76
WMEX host Michele McPhee was arraigned Thursday on charges she drove up I-93 while drunk and then attacked the trooper trying to arrest her.
At her arraignment in South Boston Municipal Court today, McPhee was released on personal recognizance on charges of OUI, assault and battery on a police officer, resisting arrest and failing to observe marked lanes.
According to a State Police report, when Trooper Patrick Candeliere declined McPhee's repeated requests to call the head of State Police and the president of the state-trooper's union and instead tried to cuff her, she started a struggle that ended with both of them heading to Tufts Medical Center for observation - in her case, overnight.
McFee did not make her 3-6 p.m. shift at WMEX, however. Instead, morning host Joe Ligotti filled in, praising her as "my dear friend, who I love, and support, and cherish."
The report, written by Candeliere, said the events leading to McPhee's arrest started around 1 a.m. on I-93 northbound near Savin Hill Avenue, when he noticed a Mercedes SUV swerving from lane to lane - at one point coming "within mere inches of sideswiping the jersey barrier on right side of the road."
At the Dorchester Ave. overpass, Candeliere writes, he turned on his cruiser lights and siren. "The Mercedes, in sequence, declerated, accelerated and declerated, bypassing the Exit 16 off-ramp. The Mercedes came to a slow rolling stop in the right lane beyond the Exit 16 off-ramp in South Boston."
Candeliere reported he pulled up, smelled alcohol and asked her why she didn't get off as he tried to get her to do. He writes she told him she wasn't headed that way, because she was heading home to East Boston. She agreed, however, to get off at Exit 18, which he reports she did, more or less - after rolling the SUV over the curb and onto a sidewalk.
McPhee, who he wrote had bloodshot and glassy eyes and slurred speech, said she'd just gotten off work at WMEX in Marina Bay - in fact, her shift ends at 6 p.m. - and that she'd "defended cops for 30 years."
At his order, she got out of the vehicle, after first making sure to "adjust several knobs and levers on her steering column and dashboard" - and then pulling up her jeans, which were falling down. Then she got chatty, the trooper reports:
"McPhee reported the following, in order: HS Grad/UMASS Boston Graduate (Bachelor degree 'Just barely graduated'), employed as reporter for ABC News and radio host for a radio station in Marina Bay (Quincy), which she identified and I was unable to understand. McPhee state that she has 'defended the police for years' and requested that I contact Dana Pullman [president of the state troopers' union] so she could go home. McPhee listed several members of police agencies and Massachusetts State Police Colonel Timothy Alben as friends whom I should contact. McPhee continued by reporting the following during field interview, in order: No medication, not seeing a doctor, no injury, no medical problems, no diabetes. I asked McPhee about how much sleep she had on the previous day and she replied 'Zero.' I asked McPhee what she had done during the day and she stated 'Work.' McPhee stated that she got out of work at 9 P.M. and went out with her boyfriend. McPhee stated that she consumed dinner, after work, at Port 305 Restaurant in Marina Bay near the radio station. McPhee reported consuming 'steak tips and stuff' for dinner.
"McPhee again stated that she has advocated for police for several years and that I should know of her. I asked McPhee how much alcohol she had consumed and she stated, 'Nothing ... well some wine at dinner.' McPhee did not detail the quantity or total volume of alcoholic beverages that she had consumed.'"
When the trooper asked her to perform a series of field-sobriety tests, McPhee allegedly told him to "call any trooper, Dana Pullman or the Colonel so I can leave." When he demurred, she refused to do any more tests - at least until he said he felt she had been driving drunk and that he was placing her under arrest.
"Fine I'll do the tests, get me a supervisor!"
The trooper tried to cuff her. McPhee "grew billigerent, resistant and enraged."
"McPhee physically counteracted my attempts to place her in handcuffs at the front of the Mercedes. I gained control of McPhee's left arm and she elbowed my chest with her right arm. McPhee proceded to kick her feet, striking me in the legs while stating 'I'm calling the Colonel ... let me go ... get a supervisor.' I radioed for help on my portable radio of struggling with McPhee for about 1 minute.
The struggle continued until another trooper and a Boston police officer arrived.
"Officer Coyne ran to my location and gained control of McPhee's left arm. Officer Coyne, McPhee and I stumbled toward the sidewalk and fell to the ground. I traveled, in the air, over McPhee while still holding her right arm. I lost control of her arm and fell on my left hand, right forarm and right knee. McPhee continued to resist and was placed in hancuffs while on the sidewalk with the assistance of Officer Coyne. McPhee was able to free herself from the handcuff and they were re-applied."
At that point, he noticed blood coming from her face - some of which now coated his left hand and arm. He says she continued her "enraged and condescending statements/behavior" as she was being booked at the South Boston State Police barracks and before she was transported to Tufts - where he went for evaluation himself.
Even in Texas, blowing under the BAC doesn’t mean you won’t be charged in DUI. Blowing above the number makes it easier to convict.
What dog?Had it been drinking too
| And the FReepers find her.... |
Better safe, than sorry.
That's why it's good to own a malaMUTE - it attracts less attention from the Authoritays...
Yew breathin' The King's Air, peasant?
ON YER BELLY!
As they shouldn't. If she commits a crime the cops shouldn't let her off because she's supported them. Their job is to enforce the law.
She thought differently. She's been disabused of her mistaken notion. :)
Now, on the subject of "committing crimes", and "enforcing the law":
I think I'm going to start calling THAT particular notion the "little girl's lemonade stand syndrome", or LGLSS.
Aa I wrote in post #32 above:
So many laws, so little time.
It's entirely at the discretion of the officer...
You'll note the WiFi tale in that post wherein the officers went back to the cop shop, and looked in The Big Book of Laws until they found one that "applied", and submitted it to the local prosecutor, who didn't bat an eye about filing "charges".
So easy, a literate caveman could do it.
OTOH, it's SO difficult to find charges against a Hillary, or a Lois Lerner, or a Jon Corzine, n'est pas? LOL! :)
Michele is awesome.
And ... we now know ... has a booze problem, some of which are short term, a bad things happens, and you wise up, most aren't.
Once the booze takes control in a situation like that, especially of a stressed person, that's what they do when they see a threat (the obnoxious 'Do You know who I am???!!!!'). Doesn't excuse anything. Typical belligerent drunk - good people and bad people. To be swerving a car you have to be really really drunk.
She's probably an alcoholic if that was the behavior, and if she doesn't quit, her career will end or degenerate rather quickly. Boston will give her another chance if she calls it what it is - a booze problem, apologizes profusely to the cops and her listeners, and quits drinking. I think there is a guy on WEEI who did something similar, no idea what made him quit.
But that is a rare path. Maybe she stumbles around for the next 2 years before getting it together.
Love her because she's pure Boston (there are a few good things about Boston (certainly not Cambridge), few of them political - Howie Carr being an exception), she's rational, feisty, and has a lot of Howie's attitude, outlook and spunk.
That said, in some ways those characteristics are typical of push-the-envelop types and booze-problem types -- it's easy to lose yourself when you're job is partially to be a personality - you have to be at social stuff a lot - and maybe you have the rumored booze gene - and maybe you just didn't master the whole life yet.
She's a good journalist at heart.
Hopefully she reads the tea leaves ... not hard to read in this case. She has a gift for what she does, but she might pay for her next 25 drinking with her career. I suspect she's been developing and building this booze habit over a number of years, probably since high school, this is not the first time she was worthy of arrest. I get caught speeding probably only 1% of the time I speed significantly for an hour. I doubt she's that kind of 1%'er.
Absolutely wish her the best - clarity, humility and self reflection - in the coming months.
And, I could be totally wrong about all of that. I know nothing about her except having listened to her for years, but I also know a thing or two about booze and its paths, how easy it is to think you're running the show when you're really not, and that usually an incident like this isn't an out-lier. She talks about lack of sleep recently, she talks about hardly having made it through school (people who don't party all the time rarely have a tough time making it through school - which is why I suspect it's an old habit.)
Obviously right now, the booze is running Michele, not the other way around. The coming months and years will reveal her actual character. The incident itself reveals little or nothing, even the obnoxious behavior, except that she at least has a booze problem, likely has to quit for good or watch her life degrade over the next 3 years or more.
But that’s not at all what we’re talking about here. The lady was either driving while drunk or not.
If she was, she should go thru the same process that I went thru in similar circumstances.
If she wasn’t, she shouldn’t.
Whats difficult about that concept?
When I lived in Beantown, I remember a local TV news station running a series called ‘Demon Drivers’ It was not pretty. I see nothing has changed.
Why does a Malamute? Some idiots think its a wolf and act accordingly.
McPhee is either one tough Southie chick or the trooper is an affirmative action hire.
OUI. See explanations, above.
You, and many of the other lore-N-ordure Freepers, have this implicit presumption contained in your posts that our current Panopticon was, is and shall ever be.
It wasn't. And besides - the current incarnation is "peasant law", enforced at the pleasure of the Panopticon operatives, as we can see from the anonymous interviews coming out of the Baltimore PD.
As an aside, any of the Founders would have coughed up a cookie seeing the compensation of Panopticon operative Patrick J. Cadeliere - $135,000 a year for a job where you can pretty much pick and choose your work for the day would be a little rich for their blood - especially since it's tax dollars.
I remain unconvinced that the Revenooin' Panopticon State is a good thing - and the peasantry's blind acceptance of it is sheer unadulterated mouth-breathing.
She probably would have made it home, just fine. If she hadn't, there are older laws, predating Panoticism, dealing with that.
"Whats difficult about that concept?"
I guess Michele doesn’t know the magic words in Boston are: “Don’t you know who I am?”
Are you a "law and order" FReeper? I made the leap of logic from your postings on this thread, but let's be clear.
Disclaimer: I'm not a "law and order" FReeper by any stretch of the imagination, since it has been amply proven since Bill Clinton's perjury in the face of a federal judge that the United States is NOT a place where the phrase "Equal Justice Under Law" is true.
I believe in the Founders' notion of justice. They wouldn't have let serial killers sit around in prison for 25 years, but would have promptly taken out the trash.
The Founders would have also disagreed about the gruberment using "the law" to attack its peasant victims, draining their finances with the bottomless barrel of gruberment cash paid to full-time prosecutors, and the like.
She forgot to pack her John Kerry Halloween mask...
Its the same here in some counties of PA. Our state limit is .08% and anything over is DUI; however, the officer can haul you in just on his suspicion (with NO field sobriety test) and run you through a calibrated breathalyzer. You can be charged with DWI (driving while influenced) for as little as .045%. If you refuse a sobriety or breathalyzer it’s an automatic loss of your drivers license for 1 year and some nasty fines; but you still get to go through the grinder and that is not an expedient process.
As others have rightly noted on this thread, anything beyond a moving violation you can bank on being prey to the “justice system”.
I am a tad confused what you appear to be confronting me about.
A couple of decades I, unfortunately, was stopped for DUI. I was arrested, charged and convicted. As I should have been. The cops were professional but not particularly polite.
They did their job properly. What I was doing was not fully intentional, but by doing it I was risking my own life and that of others. It was both wrong and illegal.
If the cops had known I’d always supported them in doing their job properly, which I had, it would have been wrong for them to let me off the hook relative to someone who had always been opposed to the police. Their job is to enforce the law, not decide who should and should not have it enforced on them.
If that notion offends you, tough. Or, better, work to repeal laws against DUI for everybody, not just friends of the police.
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