Posted on 11/11/2024 12:19:13 PM PST by Morgana
LEBANON, Tenn. (WSMV) - It’s the first thing you notice in watching the body camera footage of when Wilson County deputies approach Xavier Gray’s car.
As the first deputy arrives, Gray’s hands are in the air.
“First of all, I’m scared of the police,” Gray told WSMV4 Investigates.
Admitting he was intimidated and afraid of losing his license, the body camera footage shows him readily agreeing to a field sobriety test.
According to the arrest affidavit, Gray had crossed the center line. A deputy wrote that Gray’s eyes were red and was slow to respond to questions. The affidavit reads that he showed signs of impairment in all the field sobriety tests.
Gray’s reaction to being handcuffed is seen on the body camera footage.
“Placing you under arrest for driving under the influence. OK?” a deputy says in the video.
“Huh? I don’t even drink or anything. This is crazy,” Gray responded.
Months later, his bloodwork, processed by the TBI, shows he had neither alcohol nor drugs in his system.
“I knew nothing was in my system,” Gray said, adding that his arrest was early in the morning while he was on his way to work to write checks for his employees at his trucking company.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsmv.com ...
3 1/2 minute video about the situation
What are these crooks up to now.... always something.
this should not be an issue if you were presumed innocent until proven guilty.
unfortunately that is not the case with DUI or if you have some cash the police want, or well just about everything else too.
Would not a breathalizer have fixed that? Something is really screwy here.
Oh yeah, never take the field sobriety tests. Those things are basically unpassable. Especially if you add the stress of being pulled over and the distraction of passing traffic. Breathalyzer only.
Until the cat is out of the bag like this story.
The civil rights lawyers are going to have a field day with this one.
The only way this gets fixed is seven figure lawsuit judgements and a very noticeable bump in local taxes, followed by the insurance companies dropping the liability insurance of the local governments responsible.
“Oh yeah, never take the field sobriety tests. Those things are basically unpassable. Especially if you add the stress of being pulled over and the distraction of passing traffic. Breathalyzer only.”
Actually this is a true story. I failed one once and I was sober. I was put under arrest and the first thing I did was demand the breathalyzer test. In fact I said to the officer “bring it out right now!” The officer then realized I was not drunk at 4 am just an over tired college student. He was running a special on drunk drivers that night so he told me to go home and go to bed.
I was later told by a cop friend of mine that demanding the breathalyzer right then was the best and right thing to do.
It gets fixed when our “public servants” lose sovereign immunity and are held personally liable for these kind of actions.
We did the field sobriety tests once in high school, I don’t even remember why they definitely weren’t giving us anything to be be unsober, only the athletes passed. They’re basically a trap.
A lot of this is as a revenue stream for the locality, just like red light cameras. The State could put a stop to it, but since they usually get a cut of the action, they turn a blind eye.
so the police are drunk ?
what the heck is it with Tennessee? ... a whole steady stream of articles regarding various forms of LE corruption and abuse?
This goes on fairly often. At minimum it wastes your time and money having to prove yourself blameless. At worse you may lose your job or your vehicle. Or both.
Better reporters finding the dirt. Everything they’re finding there happens in the other 49, the only question is will they be “caught”.
> Those things are basically unpassable. <
Yep. For one reason, they are extremely subjective. If a cop wants you to fail, you will fail, no matter what you do.
But I don’t believe a breathalyzer can catch drugs in a person’s system.
I sure wish there was an easy answer here. False arrests are terrible things. But so is letting a drug-impaired person go, to maybe kill someone further on down the road.
There is an easy answer. Blood tests will catch most things. Most pleases they need a warrant for that, but they usually have a judge sitting around by the phone. And of course you can waive that. Field sobriety tests can be refused without punishment pretty much everywhere, and if you can you should, no matter what. And they ain’t actually stopping anybody because everybody in the drug culture already knows that and says no.
It is not the best solution but the police arresting people who are completely innocent for financial gain is unacceptable.
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