Reporter Jennifer Jenks gives a firsthand account of her ride-along with police officers during a DUII saturation patrol on New Year’s Eve

By Jennifer Jenks
Burns Times-Herald

Most of us have had the not-so-enjoyable experience of having those red and blue lights suddenly flashing in our rearview mirrors signaling us to pull over. Have you ever wondered what it’s like on the other side of the lights? I got the opportunity to ride along with officers from the Harney County Sheriff’s Office on New Year’s Eve and see what it was like from a cop’s point of view. The following is a timeline of my evening:

8 p.m. — I met Sgt. Brian Needham at the Harney County Dispatch Office, located inside the sheriff’s office. He was filling out citations on two probation violation arrests he’d just made — one arrest was for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and the other was for consumption of alcohol, open container and minor in possession of alcohol (MIP). He informed me that filling out these citations would not take long, but if the arrests were for driving under the influence of intoxicants (DUII), it would take over an hour because of all the paperwork involved. While he was filling out the citations, I asked him a few questions:

What’s the biggest worry for you on a night like tonight? “A drunk driver getting in a crash and hurting somebody, especially with the way the roads are tonight.”

What is a saturation and how is it different than a regular work night? “A saturation is not a lot different than a regular night. We are still enforcing traffic laws, but are concentrating on aggressive driving and DUII enforcement. We have two more officers than usual on duty. I usually work eight to 10 hours a day, but because of the saturation, I’m working longer hours.” By this time, Needham had already been on duty for 12 hours.

What’s the most dangerous situation you’ve ever been in? There was a shooting across the street about six years ago where one brother shot the other brother. I was across the street from him, and he had a gun. He never raised the gun toward me and ended up taking off running. We caught him a couple of hours later. I was prepared to shoot him if he’d moved the gun at all toward me.”

What are the best and worst things about being a cop? “The best is helping people out. The worst is when you have to throw someone in jail.”

Ginger, Needham’s wife, was working dispatch and said it had been a busy night. She’s worked for the sheriff’s office as dispatcher for 2 1/2 years and worked at the Burns Police Department for five years when dispatch was located there. She has worked New Year’s Eve before and informed me it was usually a busy night, but we didn’t usually have this much snow.
We left the dispatch office and stopped by the jail, in the next room, to explain a citation to a suspect.

8:23 p.m. — Only a few blocks after leaving the sheriff’s office, Needham pulled over a driver for not using his turn signal. He called in the license plate number first as he followed the vehicle, and then pulled him over. There were three passengers along with the driver. He talked to the driver and then came back and called in the information from two driver’s licenses (the driver and one passenger). The passenger was on probation for no alcohol, so Needham decided to request to perform a consent search. He called for backup. “You don’t do a consent search without backup for officer safety,” he informed me. He said they do a lot of consent searches on saturation nights to look for open containers. If they don’t consent, he just leaves, unless he has probable cause. If he suspects drugs, he can bring a drug dog in to smell around the car. If the dog “hits” on the car, that’s probable cause.

Needham asked the occupants to step out of the car and checked their pockets when the other officer showed up. He checked the trunk and the car interior. A third officer arrived. Needham found a pack of cigarettes in the car that he deduced belonged to a minor in the vehicle. He couldn’t put them in the minor’s possession unless she confessed they were hers, he said, so he told her he wouldn’t ticket her, and she admitted they were hers. He confiscated the cigarettes and gave the occupants multiple verbal warnings, and we went on our way.

8:46 p.m. — While driving around Washington Park to check out a report of possible careless drivers in the area, Needham explained that a lot of law enforcement is deterrence. “If people see you driving up and down the street in front of the bar,” he said, “they’re less likely to drive and more likely to call and ask for a ride.” He said they mostly do bar checks (walking through the bars) to check for underage drinking, overserving and probation violators and just to show a presence. They don’t do bar checks, he said, just to see who’s in the bar so they can pull them over later. “If we wanted to do that,” he explained, “we could just look at the vehicles around the bar.” He said they have had a big problem with bars overserving in the past. Bars are not supposed to serve individuals when they are visibly intoxicated (i.e. spilling their drinks multiple times, falling down, slurring their speech). Underage drinking used to be a huge problem as well, he said, and still is occasionally.

9:02 p.m. — Needham stopped to talk to a group of people about driving their four-wheelers on the road, which they’re not supposed to do. He said they’d had several of those that day because of all the new snow.

9:05 p.m. — Near Quail Court Apartments, a driver ran a stop sign right in front of us. Needham pulled him over near the First Pentecostal Church. The driver was driving without a license and had no insurance. He was issued citations for driving while suspended and no insurance, and the vehicle had to be towed. Needham explained that if a driver doesn’t have insurance, it’s an automatic tow. Otherwise, if the driver drives the vehicle again and gets in an accident, the police can be liable. He called for the next non-preference tow (there are two towing services: Teague’s and Sam’s Service), and then we had to wait for the tow truck to get there. The charge for the after-hours tow was $85 plus the vehicle owners have to pay about $25 per day for storage. The owners have to show proof of insurance before they can get their vehicles back. Needham told me he’d had three arrests and three tows that day already.

9:26 p.m. — While driving behind the high school, I asked Needham if it ever concerned him that someone might have a gun and shoot him when he pulls them over. He said he’s always concerned about it. “Doing a traffic stop is the most dangerous thing a cop does,” he explained. “You have no control at all. You don’t know if the person you just pulled over is wanted for murder or what.”

Needham told me he’d been in law enforcement for 13 years and with the Harney County Sheriff’s Office for 11 years. He said he initially went into law enforcement because it was a job. “I wasn’t one of those people who grew up wanting to be a cop,” he told me.

9:46 p.m. — We stopped to check out a minor walking down the side of Highway 20/Broadway near West A Street instead of using the sidewalk. Needham thought he could smell a faint odor of alcohol. The minor consented to being searched and to taking a breathalyzer test. He passed the test and was sent on his way with a warning to use the sidewalks from now on.

Needham said he had found a tin of Altoids during his consent search and thought that was probably what he smelled.

10 p.m. — We drove back by Washington Park again and then headed out toward Hines. Needham said they check the parks regularly, especially during the summer. We drove out to Eddie’s Truck Stop and saw multiple vehicles coming down Radar Hill. Needham called ahead to another officer to be on the lookout for them because it was unusual for people to be up there this time of year and this late at night. We followed two of the vehicles and saw that one of the drivers was failing to maintain his lane. Needham pulled him over for having an obscured license plate in America’s Best Inn parking lot. He didn’t smell alcohol on the driver and determined the driver was probably all over the road because he was in two-wheel drive and had chains on. He performed a consent search for alcohol and gave the driver a verbal warning.

10:32 p.m. — We drove back to Burns and witnessed an apparently intoxicated individual walking across the Safeway parking lot. Needham stopped to make sure that he was all right, and that he didn’t need a ride somewhere. He said he would rather give the man a ride than have him get in a car. “If you’re drunk, call someone to give you a ride,” he encouraged, “call us, but don’t drive.”

10:43 p.m. — We witnessed a man urinating on the side of a building while driving behind the bars on main street, but were unable to locate him by the time we turned around and went back. Needham explained that the most common things he pulls people over for are speeding and defective equipment (i.e. having a headlight or taillight out). He said officers were much busier this New Year’s Eve than last year. Last year, he remembered, there were a lot of traffic stops, but very few citations, and he didn’t remember any arrests at all. We checked for speeders on Highway 20. “Right now a lot of people are at the bars,” he told me. “You’ll be really slow until they get out.” He said they are usually busy between 5 and 8 p.m. because people drink before they head out to the bars so they don’t spend as much money. Then there’s a lull, he explained, and it picks up again between midnight and 2 a.m., when people are heading home from the bars.

10:54 p.m. — It started to get foggy and rainy, and Needham expressed concern that the roads would start getting really slick.

11:16 p.m. — Needham stopped a driver for having obscured plates and no license plate light in front of B&B Sporting Goods. He performed a consent search and gave the driver a verbal warning. As we headed back toward Burns, Needham offered, “What you’ll see later is a lot less traffic on the highway and a lot more traffic on the side roads.” People try to go on the back roads and on the road behind the fairgrounds to avoid law enforcement, he explained. He said it was getting a lot better lately, though, with people getting designated drivers and not drinking over the limit. “I guess the press and radio help in letting people know that we’re going to be out there in full force,” he mused.

11:35 p.m. —  At this point, Needham had been on the job for well over 15 hours and was ready to retire for the evening. I transferred to Deputy Lucas McLain’s vehicle in the Rite Aid parking lot.

11:38 p.m. — McLain stopped to back up another officer on a DUII stop on Broadway in front of the Dollar Plus Store. The driver was being given a Standard Field Sobriety Test (SFST). McLain said the driver had been drinking, but he passed the test, so they let him go. The SFST comprises a horizontal gaze test, where the officer passes a pen back and forth in front of the suspect’s face while the suspect follows the pen with his/her eyes; a walk and turn; and a one-legged stand. The horizontal gaze test checks for involuntary jerking of the eyes, McLain explained, which is caused by depressants (alcohol is a depressant), inhalants and PCP. The other tests check for bodily signs of impairment. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has done all the scientific research, McLain said, and shows that they’re accurate. The Oregon State Police (OSP) does the training. “These three tests have been adopted, I believe,” he said, “by all 50 states.”

11:45 p.m. — While driving around the back streets of Burns and down Egan toward the fairgrounds, McLain told me he had been in law enforcement for 8 1/2 years and on the road for 6 1/2 years (he started out in the jail). He said he had been working since noon that day, but regularly works 12 hour shifts.

11:56 p.m. — McLain pulled a driver over for no license plate light and gave the driver a verbal warning. Afterward, McLain told me about the two most dangerous situations he’d ever been in. During his first year on the road, he stopped a felon who ended up having two guns in the seat beside him and the felon reached for them. Instead of grabbing the guns, he grabbed a package of Ramen and then tried to drive off. Needham was there, as well, and tased the driver and the car died. McLain said they found out later that the driver had modified the bullets in his shotgun to be able to penetrate body armor. He said the guy ended up going to prison. The second situation was one where a suicidal man was shooting holes in his wall and floor. He said they were in a standoff with him for about two hours, when they finally got him to come out. McLain showed the same concern about traffic stops as Needham. “There are no routine traffic stops,” he said. “They’re each different, and they can turn out different each time. You never know what’s going to happen.”

12:14 a.m. — Two suspects were picked up by the Oregon State Police (OSP) for possible DUII and MIP. They were transported to the OSP office to do SFSTs. McLain explained that they were trying to give the suspects the benefit of the doubt and to give them every advantage to show they were not impaired (Red Barn Lane, where they were picked up, was covered with snow and ice). On the ride to the OSP office where the troopers said I could go with McLain to watch the SFSTs given, McLain said some people have complained to him about law enforcement pulling them over for equipment malfunction, like having their license plate light out. He explained that this was a good way to check on whether people have been drinking or are wanted criminals driving through town. “Most DUIIs don’t look like on TV or on commercials,” he said, “where they’re weaving all over the road and the alcohol comes pouring out the window.” It’s the .08 Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) drivers, he said, who are the most dangerous. He explained they tend to take more risks and feel more invincible. Drivers who are at a 1.5 to 2.0 BAC are moving slow and drifting all over the road and are easier to spot.

12:30 a.m. — Trooper Beckert administered a voluntary SFST to one of the suspects, a minor, who had been picked up on Red Barn Lane. A minor doesn’t have to have a BAC of .08 (the legal limit) to be given a DUII. They just have to show any sign of impairment, McLain explained. Beckert had the minor follow the tip of a pen with his eyes and then questioned the minor about his drinking history. He then had the minor walk nine steps heel to toe down the hallway, turn around, and walk nine steps back. He explained the test completely before administering it and made sure the suspect understood what he was being asked to do. The test had to be readministered because the suspect took too many steps and Beckert explained the test again exactly as he had done the first time. After completing the walk and turn test, Beckert asked the suspect more questions about how he ended up driving his vehicle into the ditch. He then explained the third test and made sure the suspect understood. In this test, the suspect had to stand on one foot while holding the other foot about six inches off the ground and counted until Beckert told him to stop.

Beckert told the suspect he definitely saw some signs of intoxication and arrested him for DUII. He told the suspect he was taking him to the jail to have him blow into a breathalyzer. Afterward, Trooper Alan Johnson performed the same tests on the other minor, who also showed signs of intoxication.

1 a.m. — After working a 13-hour shift, McLain was ready to head home and dropped me back off at the sheriff’s office. It was an educational and informative evening of new experiences for a new year.