Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of reports that will highlight the activities of the Citizen Police Academy through it’s 14-week course. The writer is a member of the class.
COLUMBUS -- On any given Friday through Sunday from 10 p.m.-2 a.m. one in 10 of all drivers on Nebraska roads are legally impaired or driving under the influence. One in seven customers leaving a bar is DUI.
Neal Olmer, 26, failed the Standardized Field Sobriety Test, but the indications were very subtle. Only one of the 14 Citizen Police Academy participants present this week would have arrested Olmer based on indications of the tests. Four would have given him a ride home, and nine would have sent him on his way with a warning to drive carefully.
Olmer’s blood alcohol level tested with the Preliminary Breath Tester (PBT) following the sobriety tests and the student poll registered at .142 ” nearly twice the legal limit. A person is in violation of the law when the blood alcohol content reaches 0.08 of one gram per 100 milliliters of blood or per 210 liters of his or her breath.
“Seeing him with that much alcohol in his system is a surprise because he’s not behaving at all the way I would expect a drunk to behave,” said one academy participant. “He’s not falling over or stumbling all that much.”
“I wouldn’t let him drive. But, I would give him a ride home,” said another.
My reason for the lone vote to arrest Olmer was based on his failing the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (HGN) and the walk and turn portion of the standardized field sobriety tests.
HGN is the involuntary jerking of the eyes occurring as the eyes move toward the side. According to the criteria, failure of four elements of the HGN is 77 percent accurate in indicating a high probability that the subject’s blood alcohol level is at .10 or above.
Olmer, 26, and Jessi Janssen, 22, both of Columbus were enlisted by the Columbus Police Department to participate in this week’s DWI presentation.
The two arrived at the police station at 6 p.m. Olmer had five mixed drinks each with two ounces of alcohol and two mixed drinks with one ounce each for a total of 12 ounces of alcohol consumed in a two and a half hour period. Olmer had not eaten since noon the day of the demonstration.
Janssen consumed mixed drinks containing vodka mixed with Sprite for a total of eight ounces of alcohol consumed in the same period of time.
Janssen failed the eye test portion and the walk and turn portion of the field sobriety tests. Her preliminary breath test returned a .140 blood alcohol content, well over the legal limit of .08.
The class did better with her; six would have arrested her, four would have driven her home and four would have let her go with cautions to drive carefully.
“I would give her a ride home, because she looks like a good person,” one participant said.
As the class came to a close I interviewed Olmer and Janssen before they were driven home by the officers.
“I don’t feel that bad right now,” Olmer said “I know that I’m over the limit right now, and I wouldn’t normally drive like this, but if I had, too ” if there was no one else who could drive, or if my friends were worse than this ” I would drive home.”
Janssen said she and her friends take turns being the designated driver on their outings.
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable driving home like this,” Janssen said. “I really feel over the limit right now. What’s amazing to me is that you really don’t realize how little it takes to fail the breath test. It’s almost like one drink and you’re done.”
Through the evening the class heard from officers Jeremy Zywiec, Brian Hunke and Brad Wangler.
Zywiec walked us through the legalities of defining DWI, the common symptoms of alcohol impairment and the procedures and observations officers make to determine probable cause of DWI for making a traffic stop.
Hunke presented detailed information about the field sobriety tests, and Wangler discussed the classification, usage and symptoms of illegal drugs and illicit use of legal prescription drugs.
“The goal of DWI enforcement efforts is to gain voluntary compliance to the law,” Zywiec said. “It’s important to know that with a .03 blood alcohol content a person’s reaction time is slowed, at .05 they’ll begin taking risks they would not normally take, at .08 and above the legal limit has been passed and vision is impaired, and at .10 blood alcohol content a person’s coordination is quickly slipping away.”
Zywiec said the longer enforcement continue the chance increases that individuals who drink and drive will be caught.
“The general public seems to think we wait outside the bars in order to catch people driving under the influence, Zywiec said. “It’s simply not true, but if someone calls in and tells us a friend has had too much to drink and is on the way to their car, we’re going to do everything we can to prevent that person from getting in that car and driving.”
The key to the DUI charge is the person is legally impaired and directly in physical control of the vehicle.
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