I'll bet you can find lots of cops drunk in public at the local cop watering hole on any given night. Safe to say there won't be any arrests made there, I'll bet.
None of them are drunk. They're just having a good time. ;~ )
They won't get cited for DUI when caught driving too.
The following is a bit long, but is a documented answer to your rhetorical question...
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Ken Rodriguez: Was tragic suicide victim right about North Side nightclub?
Web Posted: 02/10/2006 12:00 AM CST
San Antonio Express-News
A throng of leering patrons ring a hip-hop dance floor at Graham Central Station.
Two women — one in a tight miniskirt, the other in skin-hugging jean shorts — are bumping and grinding to the rhythms of the night.
The one in shorts thrusts her rear toward her partner. The miniskirted one opens her legs and wraps her knees around a big bottom. To throbbing music, the women gyrate.
Some might call this modern dance. George Dickerson, I suppose, would call it simulated sex.
Whatever you call it, there was lots of it Wednesday night at Graham Central Station, a club Dickerson skewered in a now-famous e-mail to City Councilwoman Elena Guajardo.
I'm here to find out if what Dickerson alleged is true: "The entertainment Graham Central Station provides for their customers," he wrote, "is of a lude (sic), lascivious, low class, debaucheristic, criminalistic, riot insistic, anarchist nature."
Zachry Construction Corp. fired Dickerson for penning that e-mail on a company computer. Two days later, Dickerson killed himself.
Guajardo claims Dickerson's e-mail was racial and discriminatory. Others say it was spot on. Was it?
The first person I meet tells me the club gets crazy. "The TABC (Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission) wants to pull their liquor license," says a guy in jeans with a long-tailed shirt. "They've been selling alcohol to minors. People leave drunk and get arrested for DWI."
How do you know?
The young, 20-something man reaches into his front pants pocket and pulls out a badge.
"I've had to come in here and arrest a couple of people," the cop says. "One for an outstanding DWI warrant. The other for assault."
In 2005, police recorded 260 incidents at the club. Another 46 have been logged through the first 40 days of '06. Complaints range from fighting and underage drinking to stolen vehicles and assault. As a result, TABC recommends nonrenewal of the club's license, which expires in April. Graham Central Station is fighting to keep it.
Are you working tonight, I ask the officer.
"No," says the cop, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, "I'm here to enjoy myself."
The cop does not want to be named. So I'll call him Steve.
Steve introduces me to two friends — deputies with the Bexar County Sheriff's Office. They, too, are off-duty and nursing drinks.
A waitress passes by with a tray of red-colored vials. Steve buys a round for his friends.
A deputy tells me he drank something called a Vampire Kiss.
What's that?
"I don't know," the deputy says with a big grin, "but it was good."
I ask the deputy about the crowd. "I recognize people that are former inmates," he says.
Really?
"I see them here all the time," Steve adds.
That reminds me: Dickerson wrote that the club attracts "undesirable, low class elements from bad parts of the city."
Some might consider jail a bad part of the city. Just guessing, but others might see a link between inmates and "undesirable" and "low class elements."
Not everyone here, of course, has a criminal history. But then it's Ladies Night, and that brings out the best in club patrons.
During the evening's miniskirt contest — top prize, $500 — one woman bends over to reveal she's either wearing a piece of dental floss for panties or nothing at all.
"That," says the announcer to a whistling crowd, "would be illegal in 48 other states."
Illegal or not, the lady splits first prize with another bare-bottomed competitor.
Sometime after 1 a.m., the off-duty cops gather around an elevated cage at the end of the South Beach dance floor. Inside the cage, two fully clothed women are dancing like strippers.
Steve places a dollar bill between his teeth. A tall woman in spiked heels and jeans gyrates to the floor, and pushes her knees through the cage's metal bars. As Steve moves his head between splayed legs, the dancer snatches the bill from his teeth.
Now lubricated with liquor, the deputies approach the cage, money sticking from mouths.
Lewd club behavior?
Dickerson, I bet, never knew who was leading the charge.