Over at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, there’s a story about an off-duty Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputy who was apparently passed out, drunk, behind the wheel of a parked car, running with its lights on. The story’s entitled, “West Allis police chief says deputy probably should have been arrested.” Here’s what happened:
The car’s engine was running and its lights were on, the officials said. But the officers at the scene decided not to arrest the 36-year-old deputy because they did not believe they had probable cause to do so, West Allis Police Chief Michael Jungbluth said.
The officers also did not administer field sobriety tests or a Breathalyzer, police officials said.
Instead, police took the deputy to their station, where he was picked up by “a sober, responsible adult,” Deputy Police Chief Jerry Ponzi said. Before the deputy arrived at the station, the scene supervisor called the highest-ranking on-duty sheriff’s official and told the official the deputy was intoxicated but had not been arrested, Ponzi said.
Jungbluth, Ponzi and Milwaukee County District Attorney John T. Chisholm said the deputy did not receive preferential treatment.
Prosecutors are awaiting more information about the incident before determining whether to charge the deputy with operating while intoxicated, Chisholm said.
The deputy has been suspended with pay pending an investigation.
What would have happened to an ordinary person in these circumstances? One knows very well that an ordinary person would have been arrested.
An experienced Milwaukee attorney confirms the view that failing to charge the deputy was unfairly preferential to the deputy:
Milwaukee defense attorney Jeffrey W. Jensen said the deputy should have been arrested.
“Assuming it’s true that he was in a highly intoxicated state, that’s open-and-closed probable cause to arrest for operating under the influence,” Jensen said.
Jensen estimated he has represented about 100 people in the last 25 years who were found by police in similar circumstances. All were arrested, even those who were in the driver’s seat of a vehicle that was not running but had a key in the ignition, he said.
“If it’s true that the West Allis police found the deputy behind the wheel of the car – with the car running and the headlights on – in a highly intoxicated state, then there’s no conclusion that can be drawn other than the fact that he was given preferential treatment.”
West Allis and Milwaukee are far from my town of Whitewater, but one would not have to travel to those places to hear stories of prefential treatment.
We have it, too — that sad tendency to favor ones’s own, as though there were any such group separate exalted above others. Rules stringently enforced against some are forgotten or explained away for others. One will often hear so many officials and their lapdog hangers-on talk about principle and rectitude, but they are often among the first to forget those worthy concepts when their own
interest is at stake. The price of fitting in with that ilk is to live a servile life, catering to opinion.
Yet, for every town father, every self-regarding town squire squawking only for himself, there are countless other sensible, common people who live well and justly. They do so without praising themselves, without advancing themeselves, without grinning like Cheshire cats.
Those many are admirable, yet unheralded.