Don't Drink In Lawrenceburg,Ind.

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http://www.newsnet5.com/health/20703731/detail.html

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http://www.newsnet5.com/health/20703731/detail.html

"Garner said the police officer did not apologize, but instead charged Lockard with obstruction of justice."

Apparently the definition of "obstruction" includes not being guilty.
Too bad the taxpayers will be the ones to pay.

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Jamie Lockard, a 53-year-old Lawrenceburg man, was arrested under suspicion of drunk driving but a breath test showed he was under the legal limit. The arresting officer doubted the results of that breath test and wanted a chemical test.

Lockard claims the officers then took him to a local hospital and physically restrained him as they took a urine and blood test. Officers argue they obtained a warrant for the tests. Defense attorney for the suspect says the warrant does not justify the means. Lockard was restrained on a gurney while the catheter was inserted against his will.

The defense says the warrant was not executed within a reasonable means. In the end, the chemical test confirmed the breath test: Lockard was under the legal limit.

Officers next moved to charge Lockard with obstruction of justice for refusing the chemical test. Lockard felt they should have apologized for the incident instead of further charging him when he was innocent all along.

If you think you are squeamish about having your blood drawn for a physical exam, imagine a cop like the one in the above story pulling you over in traffic and doing the same procedure over the hood of his squad car.

No warrant, no hospital, no sterile room. 
Just the desire to meet a performance quota to collect some federal grant money.

Sounds Orwellian, yet there are plans to do exactly that....


BOISE, Idaho — When police officer Darryll Dowell is on patrol in the southwestern Idaho city of Nampa, he'll pull up at a stoplight and usually start casing the vehicle. Nowadays, his eyes will also focus on the driver's arms, as he tries to search for a plump, bouncy vein.

"I was looking at people's arms and hands, thinking, 'I could draw from that,'" Dowell said.

It's all part of training he and a select cadre of officers in Idaho and Texas have received in recent months to draw blood from those suspected of drunken or drugged driving. The federal program's aim is to determine if blood draws by cops can be an effective tool against drunk drivers and aid in their prosecution.

If the results seem promising after a year or two, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will encourage police nationwide to undergo similar training.

For years, defense attorneys in Idaho advised clients to always refuse breath tests, Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Christine Starr said. When the state toughened the penalties for refusing the tests a few years ago, the problem lessened, but it's still the main reason that drunk driving cases go to trial in the Boise region, Starr said.

Idaho had a 20 percent breath test refusal rate in 2005, compared with 22 percent nationally, according to an NHTSA study.

Starr hopes the new system will cut down on the number of drunken driving trials. Officers can't hold down a suspect and force them to breath into a tube, she noted, but they can forcefully take blood — a practice that's been upheld by Idaho's Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The nation's highest court ruled in 1966 that police could have blood tests forcibly done on a drunk driving suspect without a warrant, as long as the draw was based on a reasonable suspicion that a suspect was intoxicated, that it was done after an arrest and carried out in a medically approved manner.

The practice of cops drawing blood, implemented first in 1995 in Arizona, has also raised concerns about safety and the credibility of the evidence.

"I would imagine that a lot of people would be wary of having their blood drawn by an officer on the hood of their police vehicle," said Steve Oberman, chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' DUI Committee.

Under the proposed program, police will draw blood of any suspected drunk driver who refuses a breath test. They'll use force if they need to, such as getting help from another officer to pin down a suspect and potentially strap them down, Watson said.

Though most legal experts agree blood tests measure blood alcohol more accurately than breath tests, Oberman said the tests can be fraught with problems, too.

Vials can be mixed up, preservative levels in the tubes used to collect the blood can be off, or the blood can be stored improperly, causing it to ferment and boosting the alcohol content.

Oberman said law enforcement agencies should also be concerned "about possible malpractice cases over somebody who was not properly trained."

"What we found was that the refusal rates of chemical testing lowered significantly since this program began," Haywood said. "Arizona we had about a 20 percent refusal rate in 1995, and today we see about an 8 to 9 percent refusal rate."