Cuff 'N Stuff
The Internal Newsletter of the Wise County Sheriff's
Department
03-23-01
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Cuff 'N Stuff 03-23-01 |
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Cuff ‘N Stuff is now adding “Urban Legends” and will alternate “Dumb Crooks” with “Urban Legends.” If you don’t know, an Urban Legend is one of those stories you hear (in person or via email) that usually “happened to a friend of a friend” and they swear it is true. It usually isn’t. Biscuits for Brains There was a sweet older lady who would often do grocery shopping for the infirm and elderly in her church. One hot, summer day a lady asked her to pick up a few things and bring them by her house in a dangerous part of Baltimore City. The sweet old lady was wary but felt that she couldn't say no, even though she was terrified of driving in the part of the city that often had shoot-outs and other drug violence. Anyway, the woman went on her way, picked up the groceries and proceeded to the lady's house. As she entered the lady's neighborhood she noticed young hoodlums gathering on every street corner. Although she had no air conditioning in the car, she rolled the windows up tightly (as a safety precaution) and suffered in the 90+ degree heat. She drove ahead until suddenly she heard a loud "pop" and felt a jolt to the back of her head. She reached to feel the back of her head and came back with a wet oozing mess that she was sure was part of her brain! Knowing that she had been shot, the woman turned around and raced to a local hospital. Somehow she made it to the emergency room and had the strength to walk right in. She told the attendant that she had been shot. Immediately she was rushed back to an exam room. Doctors whirled around and asked where she had been shot (since they saw no blood.) She said "my head," and the doctors found a mass of the oozing white substance the woman had first noticed. Upon inspection the doctors realized that the white substance wasn't part of her brain but was instead a lump of biscuit dough (the kind in a can) that had exploded from the heat of her car!
TO THE SHERIFF FROM JOE ALEXANDER OF THE WISE COUNTY EXTENSION OFFICE: The Texas Department of Health’s Grant I received for worksite wellness targeting Wise County employees is still ongoing. Thank you for encouraging your staff to participate in the Eating Lite & Wise Series. I will repeat this six week series which focuses on nutrition, weight management and behavior modification if any of your staff is interested. I just need to know who is interested. Walk Across Texas is the 2nd program targeting Wise County employees, plus other worksite employees. Any County employee who volunteers to be a Team Captain for a team of eight people will receive special incentives such as: T-shirt, pedometer, stipend as a trainer, partial fee for membership in a fitness center and chance for several special door prizes. Team Captain packets are available at the Extension Office. I will need your Team Captain’s Team registration form in my office ASAP. I still have extra monies available for this program. Thanks to you who are currently on a team and/or a team captain. Please express my appreciation to your staff who completed a Health Risk Appraisal. I have several who completed this instrument and used the last four digits of their social security number, but I did not have a department or name to know where to send it. For those employees who have completed a corrected form, your form has been mailed to Austin. If any other employees want to complete a Health Risk Appraisal, please feel free to pick one up at the Extension office. Also, I can and will present a training on how to utilize the Healthwise Handbook. One will be given to each employee free who attends this training. Please let me know if you are interested in this training and I can set a specific date during April or May.
Legal Issues - Consent and DWI OFFICER’S STATEMENT THAT DRIVER WOULD BE RELEASED IF HE PASSED INTOXILYZER TEST DID NOT COERCE CONSENT. A deputy sheriff was patrolling a section of Interstate highway when he noticed the defendant’s car approaching from the rear at a high rate of speed. The officer flashed his rear lights to alert the other driver, and the defendant locked his brakes to avoid a collision. The deputy moved over to let the defendant pass him, then pulled in behind the defendant’s car and signaled for him to stop. The defendant moved across three lanes of traffic without signaling and pulled onto the shoulder of the highway. When the deputy spoke with the defendant, he noticed that the man smelled strongly of alcohol, and the officer saw a half-full container of beer in the passenger compartment. Three unopened cans were found in the trunk. Claiming a bad hip, the defendant refused to take a field sobriety test, but failed a horizontal gaze nystagmus test. He also refused to recite the alphabet, and his speech was slurred and his eyes were bloodshot. In response to the deputy’s offer of an intoxilyzer, the defendant asked, “What would happen if I passed the test?” The deputy replied that he would call one of the defendant’s family members to come and pick him up, but that if he failed the test, he would be charged with DWI. The defendant agreed to the test, and he was taken to the county jail where he was videotaped answering questions, but again refusing a field sobriety test. The defendant signed a written consent to take an intoxilyzer, and subsequently failed the test. A defense motion to suppress alleged that the officer’s statement that the defendant could go home with a family member if he passed the intoxilyzer was such a “great, great, great incentive,” that the defendant was effectively coerced into agreeing to the test. The motion was denied and the defendant pled no contest to the charge. He later appealed the denial of his suppression motion. HOLDING: The implied consent statute provides that a person who is alleged to have committed the offense of DWI is deemed to have consented to submission of a breath or blood alcohol test. An officer must inform the arrestee, however, of the consequences of his suppression motion. Actual consent to an intoxilyzer test must be voluntary, and “not the result of physical or psychological pressures.” A misstatement of the law can render consent involuntary if it includes “extra-statutory consequences of a refusal to submit to the breath test.” Warning a person arrested for DWI that there may be consequences other than those listed in Texas Transportation Code Section 724.015 may amount to coercion, but warning in accordance with the statute of the “actual direct, statutory consequences of refusal does not affect the voluntariness of consent. When a DWI arrestee is given additional warnings not authorized by the statute, the State must show that any consent was voluntary despite the extra-statutory warnings. On the other hand, if the warning is not “inherently and necessarily coercive, the defendant must show “a causal connection between (the) improper warning and the decision to submit to a breath test.” In this case, the defendant may have been influenced somewhat by being told that he could go home if he passed the intoxilyzer. That statement was not sufficiently coercive, however, to require the State to present rebutting evidence. While reasonable persons might disagree about whether the promise to “go home” renders consent involuntary, the defendant in this case presented no additional evidence showing any causal link between the statement and his consent. The trial judge’s decision not to suppress the evidence on the grounds of coerced consent was supported by the evidence and not an abuse of discretion. COMMENT: While the consent in this case ultimately was found to be voluntary, the opinion illustrates the importance of adhering to the statutory warnings, and not promising or threatening anything outside those warnings. If a suspect is told that something good will happen to him if he passes the test, he may be induced to try the test in spite of the warnings of bad consequences if he fails. This is somewhat like the “for and against” rule in confession cases in which a mixed warning renders a suspect’s statement involuntary. Sandovar v State,17 S.W.3d 792 (Tex.App.-Austin 2000).
Huh??
From the Chaplain - Marilyn Featherstone FOUND IN A CHURCH BULLETIN: Ten Reasons Why I Never Wash
Cyber Space—“Send this to Everyone” Interspersed among the junk mail and spam that fills our Internet e-mail boxes are dire warnings about devastating new viruses, Trojans that eat the heart out of your system, and malicious software that can steal the computer right off your desk. Added to that are messages about free money, children in trouble, and other items designed to grab you and get you to forward the message to everyone you know. Most all of these messages are hoaxes or chain letters. While hoaxes do not automatically infect systems like a virus or Trojan, they are still time consuming and costly to remove from all the systems where they exist. Many administrators spend much more time de-bunking hoaxes than handling real virus and Trojan incidents. Users are requested to please not spread chain letters and hoaxes by sending copies to everyone you know. Sending a copy of a cute message to one or two friends is not a problem but sending an unconfirmed warning or plea to everyone you know with the request that they also send it to everyone they know simply adds to the clutter already filling our mailboxes. If you receive any of this kind of mail, please don't pass it to everyone you know, either delete it or pass it to System Administration to validate. Validated warnings from the incident response teams and antivirus vendors have valid return addresses and are usually signed with the organization's key. Alternately, you can and should get the warnings directly from the web pages of the organizations that put them out to insure that the information you have is valid and up-to-date. |
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Crime Does Not Have To Be A Fact Of Life |
