Approximately 1.5 million DUIs are written in any given year, but not every person arrested was driving under the influence. Getting drunk drivers off the road is supposed to be about keeping people safe, but DUI stops are also a critical source of revenue for various parties. DUI lawyers, prosecutors and courts all depend on the revenue generated from DUI tickets. Officers must fulfill quotas to keep their prestigious badge, and judges must appear “tough on crime” in order to get reelected. While getting drunk drivers off the road is an important task, law enforcement officers are increasingly abusing their power, harassing, and/or arresting SOBER people.
Drug Recognition Experts act on their own urges and arrest innocent people
Even a mainstream news outlet reported on the abuse. ABC 15 Arizona reported that sober drivers in Phoenix, AZ are getting harassed and issued DUIs. Harassed and traumatized, these innocent people are forced to spend thousands of dollars to prove their innocence. Police departments are so drunk on power now that they dub some of their fellow officers "Drug Recognition Experts." These DUI cops are making illegitimate arrests, acting outside and above the law. Drug Recognition Experts claim they can tell if you’re guilty just by looking at you.
Phoenix Officer David Morris arrested 56 people for DUIs in April of 2018. After toxicology reports came in, many of the arrests were deemed illegitimate. Officer Morris claimed these motorists were driving under the influence, but it turns out they were completely sober. Arizona doles out approximately 21,000 DUIs a year, so what percentage of people are wrongfully being harassed, traumatized and persecuted? How do we hold police officers accountable for routinely violating people’s lives?
These DUI cops act on their own urges and desires. They believe they have the power to pull you out of your vehicle, search you, and command you to perform field sobriety tests -- all based on their own opinion of you. No probable cause is needed; they can do what they want, when they want, as if they are above the law. This kind of boundless, belligerent profiling of their fellow man goes beyond racial profiling. These officers can act on our fears, escalate a situation, and put all the blame on you. They have the power to stop your movement along the roadway and threaten your life with a nightstick. If you do not obey their demands, they can gang up on you and/or threaten your life with their sidearm. As they bark at you and make you tremble in the middle of the night, you must follow their directions, even as they try to make you fail the test. They can shine a light in your face and make you follow it with your eyes as they interject commands to try and make your falter. Even if you pass their tests under pressure, they can arrest you anyway. Even though you’re sober or driving under the legal limit, you are forced to prove your innocence in court in front of a system that profits off your demise.
These DUI cops are lawless sovereign citizens who do not respect your rights as an individual. They turn the law on its head: Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, these DUI cops deem you guilty until proven innocent, while bilking you for cash. Sober drivers can be forced to pay thousands of dollars to the court just to prove their innocence. At the end of the day, the system gets paid either way and justice is not served. Many sober, law abiding people are victimized by this aggressive policing scheme every year.
At a normal traffic stop, these "Drug Recognition Experts" will try and probe into people’s lives to obfuscate them and fabricate a reason to arrest them. These officers can insist that a person has drugs in their system, taunting them with questions. These DUI cops tout their experience as an expert DRE officer as a reason to arrest their victim. In one account, a Phoenix woman was harassed because she had “eye tremors.” Another innocent man was charged with a DUI became he was taking antacids for acid reflux and could be driving impaired.
Judges should be impartial in all cases and should look for color of law abuses. They should hold law enforcement accountable when they hurt innocent people. Officers make horrendous mistakes too, and they should be corrected when wrong -- their victims compensated. As policing tactics become more violent and fraudulent, officers will face more disrespect from the public and encounter more people who are willing to speak out or fight back.
These are unlawful arrests that should be taken seriously by judges, police captains, sheriffs and justice departments. The Phoenix PD, like almost any law enforcement outfit, defends their own officers without question. Even when the motorist’s blood tests come back clean, Phoenix PD captains still claim that their officers are justified in doubting whether or not someone is impaired. This is a color of law abuse, and police departments are repeatedly justifying their own unlawful actions and getting away with it.
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