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 ...
“ Oh yeah, never take the field sobriety tests. ”
Back in my rowdy days I passed many field sobriety tests.
The key is when they use the pen to check your vision. They say to watch the pen tip as they move it left to right and watch how your eyeball reacts when the pen goes out of your range of rotation. Thing is they don’t know where your range of rotation stops. If you have been drinking and watch the pen until it goes out of sight your eyeball flutters. But, if you stop your eyes rotation just before it reaches the furthest left or right, your eye ball does not flutter. Takes some practice but easily done with drinking friends.
Hat tip-to LEO buddy who taught me this.
> Blood tests will catch most things. <
That would work. But then if the person is found to have nothing in his system, he must be compensated for the grief he went through. I guess that would be something for a civil case jury to decide.
There’s no grief. Blood tests are super quick. They have a kit in their car. Actually takes less time than the sobriety tests.
Remember this?
Police chief warns Memphis not to react violently after body cam footage release
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4126182/posts
They beat a young man to death as he was driving home from work.
They claimed he was under the influence and fought the police. He wasn’t and he didn’t.
> Blood tests are super quick. They have a kit in their car. <
Wait a minute. Are saying that at least some cops carry a blood-draw kit in their car, and they do the blood draw? I suppose it would be some sort of finger prick, and not a vial draw. But I’ve never heard of such a thing.
The last article I read about this (TN) was the local cops have stopped carrying breathalyzer test equipment in their cars. I think they also don’t have them at the station either. The only recourse is the have blood drawn at the hospital/clinc and have that mailed into the TBI lab. That lab test is not fast. So, in the meantime you’re treated as a felon. The test results can take months to complete!
Friends with a lawyer who used to be a judge.
In a lot of jurisdictions, the innocent person will be sent a hospital bill for the blood test — that showed he was innocent.
*
Field sobriety tests can be refused without punishment...
~~~
Not always!
FL license is consent to one year license suspension for refusing to submit.
What BS. Cops trying to go neurological exams. Do you really think that they can do this properly? Are the eyeball movements actually recorded by video? So we’re going to take the cops word it’s anything they say it is and you’re guilty, This is more evidence fraud and should not be used in court because it’s unverifable.
Best you can do is video evidence of gait, speech possibly some hand coordination tests as a more reliable indicator impaired driving
What is probably needed is more standardization in these tests comparing to normal controls that can be demonstrated as video evidence in court.
Even blood tests are not necessarily accurate because of tolerance which can occur with alcohol but other substances such as opioid a and benzodiazepines which can be obtained by prescription.
Yeah. They need a warrant to draw blood but yeah. Here’s some DUI ambulance chaser talking about my state:
Arizona uses special kits which contain a vacuum tube coated with specific chemicals which prevent coagulation and preserve the blood sample. Officers then follow a set protocol to mix the blood sample with the chemicals by rotating the tube end to end five times.
AZ gives you a year suspended if you refuse the breathalyzer, field test has no backlash. Ambulance chaser says Florida is the same, no punishment for refusing the FST.
So over a 6 year period, out of 186,000 cases, 609 were arrested and determined to be drug/alcohol free from lab results and their cases dismissed. So a 99.6726% success rate?
Seems kind of phenomenal. Disclosure; I was wrongfully arrested for a DUI by a training officer who wanted to search my car. Case was dismissed when blood tests came back negative.
Any quick blood (or urine test) is going to be qualitative and will not measure the quantity of alcohol or drugs in the blood There is quite a bit if cross reactivity making the false positive rate high.
It really can’t be used to prove intoxication because there’s no level.
“hand coordination tests as a more reliable indicator impaired driving”
Some 5% to 10% of the population has dyspraxia, also known as developmental coordination disorder, which means that they have impaired coordination without ever having taken a drink.
They don’t really need to. You get the half of this and half of that action, especially if they have their dashcam on like they’re supposed to. They observe and record you driving crappy, and the blood test says you tested positive for whatever, boom driving while intoxicated. They really don’t need to show that your crappy driving was because you of what was in your blood stream. Your best case scenario is a really really good lawyer can get you slid over to reckless driving.
No. Even when you blow -0.00. They will just say you are under the influence of some other drug. You should follow Southern Drawl Law And the Civil Rights Lawyer on youtube.com.
A buddy of mine - we went to college together - has ‘red eyes’ - he’s had them since the mid 80’s.
Oil was booming in the Reagan era, my buddy ‘Fred’ just graduated from MSU (Bozeman, MT) and had four job interviews in Houston or Dallas (sorry I cannot remember).
Fred flew to Texas on a Sunday looking forward to two interviews on Monday and two on Tuesday...alas Fred never made it to any of the interviews...
The hotel he was in caught on fire, Fred was on the 17th floor and did the wet towel under the door thing but he succumbed to the smoke. A firefighter found him, applied oxygen and did a few chest pumps and Fred came back to life.
That’s why Fred has red eyes, and after a few calls from insurance companies representing the hotel and the furniture manufacturer $1.25 million in settlement money. THEY Called him!
Fred has made many good investments over the years and lives a good, clean life and is thrifty. If you were to meet him you would think he is ‘stoned,’ but he is just lucky to be alive.
True story.
Doesn’t hurt that the police have their headlights aimed to shine into your rear view mirror.
They come up behind you in the dark, blind you while you’re trying to figure out what’s going on, and then pull you over when you make a mistake due to compromised night vision.
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