Criminal Law Blog
April 22, 2005
Applications To Be God Now Available at City Hall
Do you want god-like power? Apply for a job as a police officer in Texas, and you will get about as close as you can in this life.
The Texas Penal Code says that police officers can arrest anyone who appears in a public place while intoxicated to the degree that the person may endanger himself or another.
The Texas Code of Criminal Procedure says that any peace officer may arrest, without a warrant, persons who have committed Public Intoxication.
Here’s the thing, though. Unlike DWI cases, the officer doesn’t have to offer the person a chance to perform field sobriety tests or to blow into a breath test machine.
The officer just has to believe (or say he believes) that the person is 1) intoxicated, 2) in a public place, and 3) that he may endanger himself or others. If the person fits all three, he’s going to jail.
Of course, by the next morning, the evidence is all gone. Even if the person arrested fights the case, and wins, he still lives with the humiliation of having been to jail because a police officer wanted him there.
Police who make these arrests in Austin often don’t show up to court at all. Why bother? Most people arrested for this plead out. For those who don’t, the police already got his “justice” on the street.
