Mike the Musicologist came up over the weekend bearing gifts. Look what he got me.
Archive for December 13th, 2010
Your Christmas present will be blogged.
Monday, December 13th, 2010One law to bind them all and in the darkness find them…
Monday, December 13th, 2010I previously noted the case of the Austin Police Department SWAT officer who rolled his car and was arrested for DWI.
Over the weekend, the Statesman ran an article about some changes APD is making in the way the SWAT team is run; officers will no longer be on call 24-7, but will have a week of downtime every third week, among other things.
I don’t know if these changes are good or bad, but I did want to highlight one thing from the article:
Court documents have said that he refused all field sobriety tests, and investigators then sought a court order for blood samples. Results of the blood tests are not yet available.
I object to forced blood draws and to compelled field sobriety tests (and breath tests) as a 5th Amendment violation. However, given that the courts seem to disagree with me (stupid horse-brained Supreme Court), it does make me somewhat happy to see that, in this case, an APD officer got treated the same way as a regular Joe who refused the tests would have been.
This good feeling should last until Balko posts his next round-up.