Law Enforcement Should Be About Public Safety, Not Throwing People In Jail
David Harsanyi relates at Reason Magazine the story of a woman who was pulled over by Washington DC police for not having her headlights on and then arrested for having a blood alcohol content of .03%, or the equivalent of exactly one glass of wine in a 120lbs woman. A BAC of .08% is required to be considered “legally intoxicated” in Washington DC, but now the city has apparently also issued a “zero tolerance” policy making it illegal to drive with any BAC level at all.
According to Officer Dennis Fair, who arrested this woman, “If you get behind the wheel of a car with any measurable amount of alcohol, you will be dealt with in D.C. We have zero tolerance….Anything above 0.01, we can arrest.” And they do, too. According to Harsanyi, some 321 people were arrested for “drunk” driving with a BAC below .08%. The year before that it was over 400.
The problem with this is that laws against things like drunk driving exist to keep us all safe, not to put as many people in prison as possible. Yet far too often that’s how police officers and prosecutors treat those jobs. What good does it do to put a soccer mom who had a glass of wine and drove in jail? Does it make the roads safer? No. All it does is intrude on said soccer mom’s life while costing us all thousands of tax dollars in police time, court time, jail time, etc.
I think that people who drive drunk should absolutely be held accountable for endangering the lives of other motorists, but laws against drunk driving should be aimed at punishing people who are actually dangerous. Not people who had a glass of wine and drove. That, after all, isn’t in keeping with the principles of a free society.
