‘Why Me?’ : When Good Times Are Crimes: Out of the Night Comes the Shock of a Drunk Driving Arrest

It’s the cuffs that do it.

It’s that sound, angry and final, as they ratchet shut, cold and sharp around the wrists.

And you stare up at that blue uniform, stark in the headlights, and you search the implacable face for some sign that it’s all a bad joke. But in a sudden awful second, the realization comes rushing up in a blazing adrenal surge that something has just happened that you thought would never, never happen to you.

You are under arrest.

Under arrest! Because you lost your balance a couple of times? Because you swayed an inch or two? Because of a couple of drinks? You’re not a criminal. You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not like you robbed a 7-Eleven or killed someone.

It’s ridiculous, incomprehensible, insane. Fifteen minutes ago, you were driving beautifully, looking forward to a nice hot bath and bed and a lazy weekend and now . . . now you’re going to jail.

And it spins your gut into a knot.

“I’ll never forget it,” says Janice. “When they put my hands behind my back and put the cuffs on me . . . at that point I just broke down crying. I was totally emotionally gone by that time. I felt like I had two hearts and one of them was beating outside of my chest.”

A few minutes before, she had said goodby to friends at a Costa Mesa nightclub, climbed behind the wheel of her truck and headed home, north on Newport Boulevard. She remembered having two, possibly four drinks--friends may have refilled them while she was dancing, she thinks--over the course of about four hours. She felt fine, solid, competent, in control. And she drove within the speed limit, without weaving or surging, doing nothing in the 11:30 p.m. traffic to call attention to herself.

Except. . . .

“See that truck over there in the No. 2 lane?” asks Costa Mesa Officer Paul Ellis, one of two officers on a three-month assignment to his department’s Drunk-Driving Enforcement Team. “He’s following pretty close. Let’s see what’s up.”

Following in an unmarked car, Ellis pulls behind the truck, reaches out his window and directs a red spotlight through the truck’s rear window. The driver does not seem to notice, and the truck shifts into the Number 1, or left, lane. Ellis turns on the red-and-blue flashing lights next to his car’s headlights. The truck continues on, not speeding up or slowing down.

He hits the siren. Still no response. He pulls close behind the truck. Finally the driver sees that the signals are meant for her and pulls to the right-hand side of the street and eases to the curb in front of a driveway leading to a mini-mall.

She drives one of the tires slightly over the lip of the driveway, a move Ellis notes. Ellis signals her to pull into the small parking lot and she laboriously backs the truck into it, already rattled.

For three months, this is Ellis’ meat and potatoes. He and his partner, Officer Ron Stone, will do little else during that time except arrest drivers who drink. At the end of the three months, another pair of officers will be assigned to the Drunk Driving Enforcement Team and Ellis and Stone, both five-year veterans of the department, will draw other duty.

During a typical year, says Ellis, about 1,200 drunk or impaired drivers will be arrested in Costa Mesa, many of them during the party-rich holiday season.

As Ellis steps from his car--he has pulled behind the parked truck in order to bathe the truck in his car’s headlight beams--Stone arrives in a second car. The driver, Janice (not her real name) winces, embarrassed, when Ellis tells her how she has tipped her hand. Ellis asks her to get out of the truck and step over to the sidewalk in front of one of the stores.

“I’m thinking about what is going to happen to me, why I’m about to be tested, about how I’m going to do,” says Janice five days later. “I’m real nervous. I’m wondering if I’m on my way to jail, am I going to jail for a couple of nights, am I intoxicated or am I not, what initiated it all, why did I get pulled over . . . millions of little things going through my mind. It’s scary.”

Ellis and Stone flank the petite Janice, towering over her as Stone asks her where she was drinking, if she knows what time it is, if she knows where she is, what she had for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and at what time she ate each meal. She answers clearly. It is at this point, police officers say, that drinking drivers think they may be able to get away with it. So far, it has seemed easy.

But then Ellis administers the three-part sobriety test. Stone stands by and notes the results on a form. Ellis tells Janice to stand, heels and toes together, arms straight out at her sides, palms up, and to tilt her head back and close her eyes and hold the position until he tells her to stop. He shines his flashlight into her face as she stands there, weaving a few inches but not losing her balance completely.

She is then told to stand with her hands at her sides and raise her right foot off the ground about six inches while keeping the leg straight. She must hold this position for her own rapid count of 30, then do it again while raising the left foot. She wobbles occasionally.

Ellis, who has done this many dozens of times before, is methodical, matter-of-fact, straightforward, correct. He explains each test in detail, demonstrates the positions himself, and prefaces test elements by saying, “What I’d like you to do now. . . . “ He asks if Janice has any questions. The politeness does not make each instruction any less of a command, however.

Finally, Janice is told to hold her hands at her sides while walking heel-to-toe in a straight line for nine steps in a straight line in one direction and nine steps in the other after negotiating a clean about-face. She takes a deep breath, lets it out in a puff and shakes her arms out to try to relax. She steps deliberately, staring at her feet and concentrating very hard, and shakily completes the route.

“I thought I was doing fairly well,” says Janice, “except when I had to walk heel to toe, because I’ve never walked that way. The officer was being real stern and I was really uncomfortable and I was about in tears by then. I took a deep breath and tried to follow their directions. I certainly didn’t want to cause any trouble.”

But at 11:45 p.m., looking otherworldly behind the painful beam of his flashlight, a police officer is temporarily both judge and jury.

And in Ellis’ judgment, Janice has been driving under the influence of alcohol. As he moves Janice’s hands behind her back and closes the handcuffs around her wrists, Stone begins reading the official litany that no driver wants to hear: “You’ve been arrested for . . . You have the right to remain silent. . . .”

Janice is gulping back sobs as she is led to Stone’s car, and by the time he helps her lower herself into the back seat, she is crying. She has not stopped by the time she is led into a tiny cage-like booking cell at the city jail five minutes later and the door is clanged shut behind her.

She has never been arrested before and has never seen the inside of a jail.

“If they’re first-time offenders, they can’t believe it,” says Stone later. “They don’t think they’re under the influence. They think they’re fine. Just getting stopped by the police is usually traumatic enough, but getting arrested is extremely traumatic. They won’t admit that they’ve done anything wrong. They’ll say they weren’t drunk, they were just buzzed. But they don’t understand that being buzzed is being under the influence. They always ask: ‘Why are you doing this to me? ‘ “

Another thing they don’t understand, says Ellis, is that it isn’t necessary to be legally drunk to be arrested.

The pertinent entry in the California Vehicle Code, Section 23152, has two parts: one that declares it a crime to drive with a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 or higher (legally intoxicated), and another that makes it illegal to drive “under the influence” of liquor or drugs or both--even if the blood-alcohol level is below 0.10.

“It’s a misnomer to use the term ‘drunk driving,’ ” Ellis says. “We’re not just looking for people who are drunk. We’re looking for people who are driving impaired.”

A “seasoned drinker,” says Ellis, may be able to down many drinks and drive without doing anything to give away the fact that his blood-alcohol level may be unusually high. On the other hand, he says, occasional drinkers may only need one or two before they can be said--and be seen--to be driving while impaired.

About 95% of the drivers arrested in Costa Mesa for a violation of Section 23152 are at or beyond the 0.10 limit, Ellis says. They are legally drunk. And about 25% of them are repeat offenders. More than 18,000 cases involving driving under the influence were filed with the Orange County district attorney’s office during the first 10 months of 1989, said deputy district attorney Erin Emmes. The dispositions of those cases varied widely, from dismissal to fines to plea bargaining to jail time.

However, she said, a first-time offender can expect to pay more than $1,000 in fines, which may include a fee for a mandatory alcohol-education program that the convicted driver must attend once a week for several months. The driver’s license is restricted for 90 days--the car may be driven only to and from work and alcohol-education meetings--and the offender is placed on three years’ informal probation (drivers under age 21 have their licenses suspended for a year, automatically).

That’s generally the minimum penalty for first-timers. The maximum involves everything related to the minimum penalty, plus six months in jail and/or a fine of $1,000.

A second-time offender can expect, at the minimum, 48 hours in jail, substantially higher fines and a more extensive and expensive alcohol-education program.

Do it four times and the offense may be filed as a felony, “and we’re doing that,” Emmes said. That means a minimum of 180 days in jail.

That, however, is not the only way to go to jail for drunk or impaired driving. The state Vehicle Code defines felony drunk driving as driving while intoxicated or impaired and causing injury to someone other than yourself as a result. Depending upon how serious the accident and resulting injuries are, the guilty driver could go to state prison for as long as three years.

More unpleasantness may arrive with a letter from the driver’s auto insurance company. Different companies impose different consequences for a drunk or impaired-driving conviction, but it is a good bet that the driver’s premium will rise “significantly,” said John Millen, a national spokesman for Farmer’s Insurance Group. In the case of one of Farmers’ companies, said Millen, a first-time conviction means a driver’s policy will not be renewed.

“As an industry, we view drunk driving as an extremely serious situation,” he said.

If this weren’t enough, a new wrinkle is being added on Jan. 1: The blood-alcohol level at which a person is considered legally intoxicated in California will be lowered from 0.10 to 0.08.

As a result, said Emmes, more drivers may end up in jail.

In Costa Mesa, the jail is a grim, dirty, beige honeycomb of metal and heavily painted cinder block that glows under insistent fluorescent lights and smells of disinfectant.

Arrested drivers are taken through a door that leads from a small garage and opens immediately to a pair of tiny booking cells--cages with a hole in part of the metal mesh to push through belts, jewelry, keys, knives and other personal articles to the officers manning the typewriters on the other side.

On the way into the booking cell, the arrestees get a look at the heavy door of the holding tank, a dim, cement-floored cell with a tiny window in the metal door and a trough running down the middle of the rectangular floor to a drain and a steel toilet and sink.

It is there that arrested drinking drivers sleep--on the floor, shoeless, covered with wool blankets--if they have no one to come to pick them up and drive them home. Each person in the holding tank will remain there a minimum of four hours if he or she can’t find anyone to pick them up.

It is a potentially hostile, flinty, ugly atmosphere and it quickly overwhelms Janice.

“This is horrible, “ she sobs bitterly, to no one in particular. “Oh, God!” Ellis walks to the fingerprinting area, tears off one of the paper towels from a roll hanging there and hands it to Janice through the hole in the mesh.

“For most people, it’s the first time they’ve ever seen the custody facility,” Stone says, “and they’ll see some of the other people in there and say, ‘Don’t put us in with those people. We’re not bad guys.’ Generally speaking, they pull themselves together, but some males can get belligerent or try to pick a fight.”

After about 10 minutes, Janice’s tears give way to a red-faced look of utter defeat as she is questioned by an officer filling out a booking form, fingerprinted and handcuffed to a bench while blood is drawn from her right arm to determine the level of alcohol in her system (the results are pending). Her pretty face is puffy and her eyes are scarlet-rimmed and vacant.

“At that point, I’m thinking of how I’m going to get out of there,” she says later. “I felt humiliated and really anxious, wondering what was going to happen next. They asked me if I had any weapons in my purse and I looked around and thought, ‘Oh, God, I’m a real criminal here.’ They direct you as if you have no brains at all: go right, go left.”

Ellis calls it “company policy.” There are unwavering procedures used in the jail, he says, and they are used for every arrested person. Male and female arrestees are separated, but otherwise the booking procedure is mostly identical.

Ellis asks Janice if there is anyone he can call who can come to pick her up. Posting bail isn’t required, he says, but Janice must sign a notice to appear in court in order to be released without having to post bail. If she does not sign, Ellis explains, she must pay a set bail of $1,600.

“Oh, my God,” she says, shocked. “I’ll sign.”

She does, and gives Ellis the name and number of a friend.

He returns 10 minutes later to tell her that the person whose number she provided told Ellis on the phone that he also had been drinking that night, and Ellis advised him not to drive. Janice will have to come up with another name and number. She does, and Ellis makes the call.

Half an hour later, her friend arrives and she is released. She is scheduled to appear in court later this month to answer the charges.

“I was feeling glad to be out,” says Janice, “but I was still very anxious that it ever happened. I would never have forgiven myself if I had hurt somebody. I couldn’t think of anything other than what would have happened if I had harmed somebody, or a member of my family had been harmed.

“For three days, I didn’t do anything but think about it. I didn’t do any housework, the laundry didn’t get done over the weekend, I didn’t pay any bills. And I didn’t sleep when I got home that night. I couldn’t sleep until the next night. You don’t eat, and your mind just goes crazy.

“Now I’ve slept and I’ve told my friends and co-workers and they said, ‘God, this happened to you, and you don’t even drink.’

“I don’t advise anyone to let it happen. If they want to go out and have some cocktails after work or with friends, they should have a designated driver. That’s my motto now: Either don’t drink or have someone with you who can drive.

“I guess it can happen to anybody. I’m not a drinker. But that night I was.”

STATISTICS--A look at the county’s alcohol-related driving statistics. Clipboard. N2

FREE RIDES--Holiday revelers unable to drive home can get free cab rides. N16

FATALITIES DROP--Why traffic deaths attributed to drinking dropped here last year. N17