Let's Talk Sober DUI
- Thread starter Jon Wilder
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Yup. Gotta love Part 141 programs that require a first or second class medical as a condition of acceptance.
Jon Wilder
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It has happened to those with DUIs that, at the time of application, were 11+ years old. And this was on a 3rd class application.
Police report will have the BAC, but most agencies purge their records after 3 years or so.
That’s still not all DUIs and still not all student and private certificate holders. It’s weird about purging agency records, but I guess it happens although court records seem to have a longer life.
Several of my wife’s court records from a ticket 25 years ago are still publicly available. For a small fee, I can get a certified true copy of all the available records, to include both the original speeding ticket and the receipt of it being paid.
Dixiebluesky
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If a cop intentionally railroads somebody and are found out, they simply "resign" and move to a new department. I am not anti policing but qualified immunity needs to be drastically changed.
If a cop is wasted and pulled over he simply has to show the other cops he is a cop and get sent on his way. I have been there when it has happened.
If a cop is wasted and pulled over he simply has to show the other cops he is a cop and get sent on his way. I have been there when it has happened.
Jon Wilder
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The court records only show the offense convicted of. They don’t show the evidence that led to the conviction.That’s still not all DUIs and still not all student and private certificate holders. It’s weird about purging agency records, but I guess it happens although court records seem to have a longer life.
Several of my wife’s court records from a ticket 25 years ago are still publicly available. For a small fee, I can get a certified true copy of all the available records, to include both the original speeding ticket and the receipt of it being paid.
mark.staggs
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Yep. If you've spent any time or grown up in small rural towns, you know this is fact. Grew up outside a small town of < 2500 people, and the only thing I observed that stopped some of this was the overzealous cop that accidentally harassed a city councilman's son and friends. He just moved to the next town over, though.
I support police folks (have family members that are/were officers), but after hearing some of their stories it's certainly eye opening how small agencies have almost no accountability. And large ones overlook things due to political reasons and quotas of various sorts.
And, as @EdFred pointed out, be calm, polite, but assertive of your rights if you're unlucky enough to get one that's trying to be a d**k. "No, I refuse to answer your questions by asserting my fifth amendment. I won't perform your FST, but I'd be happy to perform a breathalyzer or take a trip for a blood draw if you must." Full-stop talking there, make them do their job to prove it. Turn on your audio recorder if you can.
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
Anarchy will be the outcome of ending qualified immunity. Police jobs, which are very difficult to fill today, will be impossible to fill and those in those positions will minimize the risk of a law suit by doing nothing.
Iflydogs
Pre-takeoff checklist
My experience: got a dui, reported it, got a letter from the FAA telling me not to do it again. Honestly not a big deal, ranks in the top one hundred thousand of life-changing experiences.
Depends on the court, I guess. For my wife’s unpaid ticket that resulted in a a suspended license and an eventual (erroneous) felony conviction entry in FDLEs criminal reporting system. Every bit of evidence from the speeding ticket to handwritten reports and notes between the deputy and the county prosecutor to e bench warrant, the County Clerk’s receipt for payment of the fine, and more were available and provided to us once we engaged the right attorney. That information was enough for Walton County Sheriff’s Office and the County DA to petition FDLE to remove the entry, correcting the error which cleaned up NICS, which resulted in my wife getting her Global Entry appeal approved.
But you seem to have this topic nailed down, so I’ll let sleeping dogs lie from here on out.
Jon Wilder
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How long ago was this? I know many years ago it used to be that way, but they've been throwing people to the HIMS wolves for even first DUIs in recent years.
Jon Wilder
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This right here. Absolutely ridiculous. At that point it's just punitive measures.
Even ten years ago is ludicrous. Like what about their life in the last ten years suggests a need for this?
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
Kinda true.
Section 1234 (a) operating under the influence of alcohol/drugs.
Section 1234(b) pertaining with a BAC of 0.08 or more
Section 1234(c) operation with a BAC of 0.15 or more.
If you are convicted (a), we can reasonably assume you refused a test. If convicted of (b) or (c), we know you tested and the basic results.
bbchien
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That's counter to regulations, and not credible unless he had other arrests with non-zero BACs.....
B
Tarheelpilot
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I generally agree but also am an advocate for ending qualified immunity. There was a short window of time when it was appropriate in the narrow scope it was created. It has become a shelter that hides officers and agencies from accountability.
Time for it to go away.
Just the opinion of this former LEO.
Tarheelpilot
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Oh yeah. Forgot all about that…
I don’t think unions for cops should be allowed… at all.
There are risks associated with not having them to the public but, anecdotally, I feel their existence creates more problems than they prevent.
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State DUI laws and local practices vary wildly. Refusing a test is one of many ways to be convicted of a DUI without the element of a specific BAC being proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Other ways include the testing equipment breaks down, the lab technician is not available to testify, the defendant was unable to consent or refuse a test due to incapacitation, a clerical error led to the charge being filed without a specific BAC element (the dropdown box for types of DUI can be very lengthy in some jurisdictions), and a plea agreement resulting in a conviction being entered without a specific BAC element. It is also possible to prove that a person is under the influence of alcohol or a combination of alcohol and drugs with a BAC beneath .08%.
Refusing the test can lead to that outcome in some places, but in others it will show up differently. Some states, for example, have created a separate charge for refusal (which typically requires that the government prove there was probable cause to believe the defendant was impaired by alcohol and had an opportunity to decide whether to take the test after being advised of the consequences of refusal and the right to speak with an attorney before deciding).
The FAA is sincerely and reasonably worried about closet alcoholics taking to the skies and leading to the deaths of others. Some people manage to remain addicted to alcohol for decades without being caught driving under the influence often or at all. Other people pull a Zack Morris and, the first and only time they look at an open can of beer, immediately crash into a telephone pole and get charged with DUI. How do you suggest the FAA determine, based only on a person’s criminal conviction record, whether he is the former or the latter?
Also, and this may be outside of what you want to discuss, but how does an older conviction for DUI with a BAC of, say, .10% (the pre-2003 federally mandated number) or higher factor into the discussion of “sober DUI”?
Lindberg
Final Approach
So a HIMS AME, HIMS psychiatrist, and a psychologist determined this guy had a substance-abuse problem, and sent him to rehab? What's the issue? Having a 0.0 BAC at one point in time does not disprove a substance abuse problem.
My buddy, if you tested him right now, would have a BAC of 0.0. Three weeks ago, he had a BAC of .412+ and was walking and talking in the ER. He's an alcoholic, like some posters in this thread arguing the FAA should leave them alone because of the non sequitur "bad cops." The difference though is that my buddy doesn't blame Boogeymen for his problems.
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SniffleValve
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These are only the cases that we know about and were proven.
Much like how they say if someone is ticketed for a DUI they probably drove over the legal limit many times before
If a cop is busted lying, which takes a LOT, you can bet they did it MANY times before.
Go on YouTube and type first amendment audit, these guys will do nothing illegal, just they know their rights and walk around in public with some go pro camera, the amount of police who lie to them, try to bully them, illegally arrest them, or just start screaming and acting crazy, it’s mind boggling, and there endless videos like this.
As a kid I wanted to be a cop, now days I fully do NOT support police, there are a few good apples but with the current police culture I’m sadly sure that will drive the last of them out too
Much like how they say if someone is ticketed for a DUI they probably drove over the legal limit many times before
If a cop is busted lying, which takes a LOT, you can bet they did it MANY times before.
Go on YouTube and type first amendment audit, these guys will do nothing illegal, just they know their rights and walk around in public with some go pro camera, the amount of police who lie to them, try to bully them, illegally arrest them, or just start screaming and acting crazy, it’s mind boggling, and there endless videos like this.
As a kid I wanted to be a cop, now days I fully do NOT support police, there are a few good apples but with the current police culture I’m sadly sure that will drive the last of them out too
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
There are 42 states that allow collective bargaining for police. 38 of those states prohibit police from striking and do not have a binding arbitration procedure. So where did those unions get so much power?
Lindberg
Final Approach
So did the airman in your example have a positive PEth test that didn't match his narrative? If so, what basis do you have to conclude that it was a false positive vs. him lying (or vice versa)?
A friend was convicted based completely on the officers observations, refused all the tests. At the time refusal carried less of a penalty than a conviction however, state still won. Washington has since changed the law.
idahoflier
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Disagree. Better policing and better public trust will be the outcome.
flyingpreacher
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Ok, LEO here. Here’s my take on some of the items that have been discussed.
Tennessee records. Did anybody notice the decreasing trend? That means that they are getting better and better year over year. They are up to a 99.71% accuracy rate in the last year of record. While we can all agree that if somebody is totally sober, they shouldn’t get arrested, it seems that TN is working to make that a reality by decreasing the numbers of inaccurate arrests.
LEO infallibility: we are NOT infallible, but how you handle it affects what we perceive. If I stop a guy for something and when I try to talk to him about it, he becomes belligerent, it makes me wonder what he is hiding. On the other hand, if he’s respectful, that too is probably going to influence my perception. For example, 2-3 years ago, I addresses something with a guy that I legitimately thought he was doing wrong. He was respectful and it was a non-issue. A while later, I found out that, yup, I was wrong!!! In my particular context, I see the same people frequently, so the next time I saw him, I pulled him aside and let him know that I was wrong, apologized to him, and thanked him for the respectful way he handled himself. And for the record, this was a black guy that had probably 3-4” and 100+ pounds on me. Black guy who is respectful is going a lot further than a belligerent white guy. Unfortunately, in many black communities, the stereotypical attitude toward law enforcement blows situations up that don’t need to be. (Again, not speaking of 100% of situations. We ARE fallible, and in no way am I saying that racism doesn’t exist out there.)
Qualified immunity: I can 100% see the argument that many (and increasingly more) people share regarding ending qualified immunity. However, put yourself in the shoes of a good, but not infallible, law enforcement officer. You are doing your job. You do it well. But you do your job in an environment where people are increasingly litigious, increasingly hostile, and, in any case, are nervous when they are dealing with you. (I still get a bit nervous when pulled over! “What did I do wrong?!”)
Now, you’re doing your job one day, and you make a mistake (which we all do in our respective jobs. Think of it like an IFR altitude bust.) You were doing your job to the best of your ability, and now you’re facing a $100m lawsuit. If you face that alone, your life could be ruined by somebody just looking for a payday. If that charge is instead levied against your department/agency, it may not affect your pocket as much, but could still have significant ramifications. So the idea of qualified immunity for an officer legitimately trying to carry out their job being protected for what they do in the line of duty makes sense to me.
However, I still think there should be accountability for some of this stuff. I too watch the first amendment audit guys and some of their content makes me LIVID! Officers “making up laws” to justify their own positions and sometimes arresting on their made up laws is infuriating. What I do love is when another officer arrives on scene and says, “Uncuff him and let him go. You can’t do that.” Those are good cops who know the law and want to enforce it, not get in their feelings and make stuff up.
So to the question at hand. In your job, if you had a 99.5+% success rate, you’d probably count yourself successful (and you would be). Consider that Tennessee has approximately 17,500 officers spread across their various agencies. That means that one quarter of one percent of officers made this mistake in 2023, assuming that each officer made that mistake only once. If 99.75% of your company had perfect records and 0.25% had made a single mistake in the year, you would probably count that as a good success rate.
As for the FAA and HIMS, should there be a legitimate way to challenge that ruling? Absolutely. But with the exception rate (using the given statistics) being well under 1%, you can also understand why they don’t invest tons of time/money into investigating claims of a sober DUI. The simple solution would be for the HIMS AME to evaluate your case and reply to the FAA “unfounded.” (Yes, you’re still going to have to go to a HIMS AME!) Then, if the FAA wanted to follow up on those very, very few cases of that <1% of sober DUIs that specifically involve pilots it would not be taxing on their personnel or resources. Just think, if 0.3% of DUIs are sober, and (per the FAA’s numbers) only 0.24% of the US population are pilots (including all student certificates) then the odds of this Venn Diagram overlapping is 0.07%.
TL;DR Cops aren’t perfect, but if you act respectfully rather than like a jerk, it helps your case. The overwhelming majority of officers don’t make this particular mistake and even the ones who do, it’s unlikely to affect a pilot. Cops are being sued more than ever, so some measure of qualified immunity makes sense.
Tennessee records. Did anybody notice the decreasing trend? That means that they are getting better and better year over year. They are up to a 99.71% accuracy rate in the last year of record. While we can all agree that if somebody is totally sober, they shouldn’t get arrested, it seems that TN is working to make that a reality by decreasing the numbers of inaccurate arrests.
LEO infallibility: we are NOT infallible, but how you handle it affects what we perceive. If I stop a guy for something and when I try to talk to him about it, he becomes belligerent, it makes me wonder what he is hiding. On the other hand, if he’s respectful, that too is probably going to influence my perception. For example, 2-3 years ago, I addresses something with a guy that I legitimately thought he was doing wrong. He was respectful and it was a non-issue. A while later, I found out that, yup, I was wrong!!! In my particular context, I see the same people frequently, so the next time I saw him, I pulled him aside and let him know that I was wrong, apologized to him, and thanked him for the respectful way he handled himself. And for the record, this was a black guy that had probably 3-4” and 100+ pounds on me. Black guy who is respectful is going a lot further than a belligerent white guy. Unfortunately, in many black communities, the stereotypical attitude toward law enforcement blows situations up that don’t need to be. (Again, not speaking of 100% of situations. We ARE fallible, and in no way am I saying that racism doesn’t exist out there.)
Qualified immunity: I can 100% see the argument that many (and increasingly more) people share regarding ending qualified immunity. However, put yourself in the shoes of a good, but not infallible, law enforcement officer. You are doing your job. You do it well. But you do your job in an environment where people are increasingly litigious, increasingly hostile, and, in any case, are nervous when they are dealing with you. (I still get a bit nervous when pulled over! “What did I do wrong?!”)
Now, you’re doing your job one day, and you make a mistake (which we all do in our respective jobs. Think of it like an IFR altitude bust.) You were doing your job to the best of your ability, and now you’re facing a $100m lawsuit. If you face that alone, your life could be ruined by somebody just looking for a payday. If that charge is instead levied against your department/agency, it may not affect your pocket as much, but could still have significant ramifications. So the idea of qualified immunity for an officer legitimately trying to carry out their job being protected for what they do in the line of duty makes sense to me.
However, I still think there should be accountability for some of this stuff. I too watch the first amendment audit guys and some of their content makes me LIVID! Officers “making up laws” to justify their own positions and sometimes arresting on their made up laws is infuriating. What I do love is when another officer arrives on scene and says, “Uncuff him and let him go. You can’t do that.” Those are good cops who know the law and want to enforce it, not get in their feelings and make stuff up.
So to the question at hand. In your job, if you had a 99.5+% success rate, you’d probably count yourself successful (and you would be). Consider that Tennessee has approximately 17,500 officers spread across their various agencies. That means that one quarter of one percent of officers made this mistake in 2023, assuming that each officer made that mistake only once. If 99.75% of your company had perfect records and 0.25% had made a single mistake in the year, you would probably count that as a good success rate.
As for the FAA and HIMS, should there be a legitimate way to challenge that ruling? Absolutely. But with the exception rate (using the given statistics) being well under 1%, you can also understand why they don’t invest tons of time/money into investigating claims of a sober DUI. The simple solution would be for the HIMS AME to evaluate your case and reply to the FAA “unfounded.” (Yes, you’re still going to have to go to a HIMS AME!) Then, if the FAA wanted to follow up on those very, very few cases of that <1% of sober DUIs that specifically involve pilots it would not be taxing on their personnel or resources. Just think, if 0.3% of DUIs are sober, and (per the FAA’s numbers) only 0.24% of the US population are pilots (including all student certificates) then the odds of this Venn Diagram overlapping is 0.07%.
TL;DR Cops aren’t perfect, but if you act respectfully rather than like a jerk, it helps your case. The overwhelming majority of officers don’t make this particular mistake and even the ones who do, it’s unlikely to affect a pilot. Cops are being sued more than ever, so some measure of qualified immunity makes sense.
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
Let’s assume you are correct. Do you believe the average police officer has the resources to pay attorneys for nuisance lawsuits? How propose this brave new world you want gets funded?
Can you share what type of coaching or performance management goes on within police organizations when someone is not performing at a standard? I'd also be interested in the internal metrics that are used to measure performance. Id be interested to hear about the performance management in situations that haven't escalated to lawsuits or public scrutiny. The reason I ask is that is what I am used to in my mfg/operations support jobs. As an example from your post, what might happen internally with the officer that gets told "uncuff him..."?
flyingpreacher
Line Up and Wait
That's a really big question and one on which I'm unqualified to give a thorough answer as I can only answer for my own agency, not the hundreds or thousands of other agencies out there. So I will give you some info on how it works for us, but take this with that caveat in mind.
First of all, it depends on where an officer is in his career. What happens to a probationary staff member versus what happens to a guy 6 months from retirement are going to be different. If an officer is in his probationary year, there is no cause necessary for termination. If a rookie messes up, his response will determine what happens: if he takes the criticism, it's probably a non-event, but if he bucks, he might not be cut out for this line of work. Minor mistake, probably overlooked by supervisors and just addressed by more senior officers. Moderate mistake, dealt with by supervisors (Lieutenants usually, maybe the captain). A severe mistake gets referred straight to the top and usually ends in termination, or as someone referenced earlier in this thread, resignation. We all hate that because it means that they can theoretically come back later, or at least get a job with a different agency.
If it's a guy with a couple of years in, he will get addressed by senior officers for a minor error and maybe even a moderate one. For a serious error, it probably goes to the top again, but this time, more likely for suspension than termination. One guy messed up to the point that I'm not sure how he still has a job and he just got 30 days on the street with no pay. (And while he hasn't messed up like that again, he's still not a great officer.)
For somebody at retirement eligibility, for something severe, he may be told to put in his retirement paperwork. "Dude, you've put in 20+ years, but we can't keep you on with that infraction. You need to go, but we don't want to cheat you out of all that invested time, so just retire rather than get fired."
And I do have to add this: depending on the severity of the offense, if it happens on duty, we can be referred to the Office of Internal Affairs, Office of the Inspector General, or the FBI for prosecution. I have seen that a couple of times and it isn't pretty. (Off-duty stuff is separate and can still be prosecuted, but flows through a different chain, although it can still result in suspension/termination from work.)
As far as performance metrics, I won't go into the details, but I get evaluated quarterly and annually on 5 primary criteria. If I get Outstanding ratings on at least three of them for the year (which is a culmination of the quarterly evals) then I am in line for a pay raise, cash incentive, or additional time off. That motivates a lot of people to perform well and not mess up too badly. (One of the metrics is communication, which, based on the length of these posts, you can probably guess, I usually get an O on that one! lol)
Eric Pauley
Pre-takeoff checklist
Edit: missed the total number of DUI arrests being lower than total officers.
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flyingpreacher
Line Up and Wait
So your argument is that one officer is responsible for let’s say 3 or more of those? If indeed that’s the case, he is responsible for roughly 7% of the state’s inaccuracies, and I can assure you that a state who is actively working to reduces incorrect arrests would have his badge in a heartbeat.
Based on the numbers, the total DUI arrests divided by total DUI arrests that indicated drugs or alcohol was 99.71%. That isn’t each individual arrest, it’s the total accuracy rate. And if there are 17,500 officers and only 45 TOTAL wrongful arrests in 2023 (out of 15,323 total DUI arrests), I’m not sure how you figure that 25% of officers get it wrong. There are fewer DUI arrests than officers. I get your point that it isn’t 1 arrest per officer per year, but I would be hard pressed to find that 1 officer is responsible for more than 1-2 and still be on the force.
Eric Pauley
Pre-takeoff checklist
Ah, thanks for pointing that out! You're completely correct.
Related: it's a little shocking to me that TN has fewer than 1 DUI arrest per officer per year. Is this actually correct?
flyingpreacher
Line Up and Wait
Well, I didn’t make the stats, just going based off of what was presented, but you figure the majority of people actually do drive sober, then factor out those who drink and drive but don’t get caught and also taking a daily average of 42 DUI arrests per day, it sounds reasonable. Then factor in that of those 17,500 officers, roughly 28% of them are off on any given day (assuming a 5-day week) and some of the rest are not patrol officers, yeah, I can believe the numbers.
midwestpa24
Final Approach
I don't have an issue with the police in these instances. That is why we have the Constitution and the judicial system, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. You aren't making a legal case on the side of the highway.
My issue is with the FAA using the arrest as sole evidence to strip a pilot of their privilege of flying, especially for commercial pilots who may lose their sole source of income and financial support without any recourse.
My issue is with the FAA using the arrest as sole evidence to strip a pilot of their privilege of flying, especially for commercial pilots who may lose their sole source of income and financial support without any recourse.
Dixiebluesky
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They will never not back one of their own, no matter how wrong something is. Like the pilot in Colorado pulled over for some piddly reason, blinker or something. It is easy to see in the bodycam footage this guy is not impaired. First the I smell alcohol, then the I smell weed. But they are all so hell bent on giving him a DUI, the cops the prosecutor. Blood work shows something like a 1/4 tab of Benedryl in his blood. Instead of somebody saying "no this is wrong" and putting a stop to it they were trying to convict and destroy his life.
All of this to try and avoid a lawsuit for wrongful arrest.
All of this to try and avoid a lawsuit for wrongful arrest.
Lindberg
Final Approach
Do you have an example of that happening? Because it would be contrary to policy.
midwestpa24
Final Approach
I believe there were previous examples in this thread.
The only case I have personally dealt with was a former student of mine. When he was a young lad, he ran with a bad crowd and got picked up for drug possession. Stupid mistake, got away from the crowd and the drugs. 20 years later he is a clean and sober very successful business owner and upstanding member of the community. He decides he wants to learn to fly. That one possession conviction from 20 years ago cost him 2 years and over $10,000 dealing with HIMS to prove he wasn't an addict, he wasn't brain damaged, and he wasn't using. Most people would have walked away, but he was passionate about learning to fly and had the resources to do it. After all that, he received a temporary SI on the promise of getting a clean 3rd class medical after the one year SI. When that year came up, the FAA wanted him to return to HIMS for more testing. Even the HIMS AME thought it was ridiculous to require more testing and that it was clear to him they wanted him to go BasicMed instead of issuing him a medical.
Does any of this prevent a closet case alcoholic or drug user from flying an airplane? Not a chance. I know plenty, and I bet you do too, of pilots that are borderline functional alcoholics. They just have never gotten in trouble.
Lindberg
Final Approach
So that's not really a relevant example. And FWIW, seems perfectly reasonable to me.