This is very anecdotal, but still:
“Going to a bar is not an opportunity to go get drunk,” TABC Capt. David Alexander said. “It’s to have a good time but not to get drunk.”
TABC is the acronym for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, who apparently went through 3 dozen Irving bars last week. Only 30 people were arrested for public intoxication. As Texas-born comedian Ron White is famous for saying:
I was drunk in a bar. They THREW me into public. I don’t wanna be drunk. In. Public. I wanna be drunk in a bar. Which is perfectly legal. Arrest them.
Apparently it’s not perfectly legal to be drunk in a bar.. in Texas anyway.
The TABC is just trying to prevent drunk driving.
TABC officials said the sweep concerned saving lives, not individual rights.
But it gets better.
At one location, for example, agents and police arrested patrons of a hotel bar. Some of the suspects said they were registered at the hotel and had no intention of driving.
This leads me to some questions. Such as: what is the statute for being publicly intoxicated? Is it based on your actions or BAC?
And this is a bit of an odd search for data, but I’ve been wondering if anyone has ever correlated car crashes involving drunk drivers and their previous sober driving records. I’d like to see if there is any data that says that drunk drivers who cause accidents are also usually the ones causing accidents when they’re sober.
Preemptive action against people who haven’t done anything wrong (yet)? Where have I seen this before? Where would cops get an idea like that?
Some may argue that the country as a whole is inching away from our “land of the free” mentality to more of a “what’s wrong with a national curfew?” mentality. Texas is just at the bleeding right-wing edge (haven’t they always been?).