30 Gallons to Imprisonment
Saturday, May 22, 2:22 a.m. – Officers patrolling the 6500 block of Del Playa Drive observed a 22-year-old male stumble off the street into a driveway and sit down next to a parked car.
When police approached the man and inquired about his welfare, he replied, “I’m drunk. I’ve had two kegs of beer.”
Officers noted that the man reeked of alcohol, his eyes were bloodshot and his speech was slurred, but that he was remarkably coherent for someone who had just single-handedly consumed more than 30 gallons of an alcoholic beverage.
Not surprisingly, the beer-guzzling champion was unable to say where he was, or how he was going to get back home to Oxnard.
The man apparently also had two identities, as he provided officers with a name not consistent with the one on his driver license. When the man refused to answer any further questions, officers decided to call him John Doe until they could help him straighten out his identity crisis.
Mr. Doe was arrested for public intoxication and transported to Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was housed pending sobriety.
Handcuffs Make It Harder to Flip the Bird
Friday, May 21, 2:40 a.m. – Officers on patrol in a marked police vehicle encountered a 23-year-old male staggering across the street on the 6800 block of Pasado Road.
Officers illuminated the man with the vehicle’s headlights, but he did not react. An officer got out and asked the man where he was coming from, to which he responded that he was on his way home. The man said he lived at Santa Ynez Apartments, and pointed – incorrectly – to where he thought home was located.
The man admitted he had been drinking downtown earlier in the night and had consumed a “couple of beers.” He followed with a startling confession: “Honestly, I was drunk tonight.”
Police noted that the man’s level of inebriation did not appear to have decreased, as his speech was slurred and he appeared unsteady. The report classified the odor he was emitting simply as “strong.”
When officers informed the man that he had passed his residence and was more than a quarter of a mile away from his purported destination, he changed his story and said he was actually just out for a walk.
The man then became defensive and sarcastic, at one point asking one of the officers, “Is it OK if I flick you off next week?”
One can only guess why he felt he needed permission to perform such an act, or why it would have to wait until the following week.
During his contact with the officers, the man repeatedly asked how he could have avoided being arrested – while for some reason ignoring the stumbling around in front of police cars while severely intoxicated that got him noticed by the cops in the first place.
The man was arrested for public intoxication and transported to Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was housed, pending sobriety.
Law Enforcement’s in the Job Description
Thursday, May 20, 12:34 a.m. – Officers at the Isla Vista Foot Patrol station watched as a 24-year-old man outside the station knocked over his bicycle and slumped against a sign pole.
The man then got on his bike and slurred, “The cops can’t do anything; I’m drunk.”
Officers approached the man and asked him how much he had drunk, to which he replied, “too much.”
The man was belligerent when answering further questions, but officers were able to determine that he did not know where he was or where he planned to spend the night.
To prevent the man from expanding on the list of “ways people have gotten hurt by being too drunk to care for their own safety,” like walking off a cliff or meandering the wrong way into traffic, officers arrested the man for public intoxication and transported him to Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was housed pending sobriety.
On the Sobriety Test, Fill in All the Bubbles
Friday, May 21, 11:42 p.m. – Officers observed a 19-year-old male sitting on the curb at the northeast corner of the intersection of Camino del Sur and Sabado Tarde Road.
The man’s head was resting on his folded arms, and he was not moving. Officers’ initial attempts to contact the man produced no response, so they called to him louder. When the man still did not look up, an officer approached him and shook his shoulder.
The man promptly fell over.
With considerable effort, he worked himself back up into a sitting position. Police asked the man if he had any identification with him, to which he replied that he did.
However, it was at this point that the officers encountered a problem: The I.D. was in his back pocket, and he would have to stand up to retrieve it. Officers asked the man if he was able to stand, and he said “yes.”
Upon trying to stand, he immediately fell back down to the curb.
Police opted against giving the man a third chance to perform his impromptu tumbling routine, and instead asked him where he lived. He replied, “I was walking with my friends. I don’t know where they went.”
The officers decided that this was not a valid address and repeated the question. This time, the man informed them that he lived in Manzanita Village.
Officers moved onto [[on to]] the next question in their “how drunk are you?” test and asked the man if he knew where he was. He started to answer, but quickly became confused and stopped.
Apparently he figured one out of two wasn’t so bad.
Officers elected to cut the quiz short at this point and arrested the man for public intoxication and transported him to Santa Barbara County Jail, where he was housed pending sobriety.