Last Thursday, a bunch of cops got together for a routine Michigan State Police training. When an instructor asked someone to help them test out a breathalyzer, one officer happily volunteered—and then allegedly blew a goddamn 0.08, ABC affiliate WXYZ reports.
Apparently, the whole thing happened during a class on blood alcohol concentration levels and a brand of breathalyzer called the DataMaster. “During that class he volunteered to give a sample and it was determined he had alcohol in his system,” Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw told the Detroit Free Press.
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It’s unclear why, exactly, the unidentified cop wanted to take the test in the first place, seeing as how he was allegedly secretly drunk on the job, but since he hadn’t driven to the training and didn’t have his gun at the time, he wasn’t immediately arrested. Instead, according to Shaw, the State Police sergeant on duty “dismissed him from the class and sent him to his department,” where he presumably got chewed the fuck out, sobered up a bit, and pondered the string of severely stupid choices that landed him there.
“The bottom line is that he showed up to work under the influence of alcohol,” Detroit Police Chief James Craig told WXYZ in an interview. “Certainly, that’s a problem. It’s a problem for me, and it may be a problem on how it was handled after that.”
The Detroit Police Department hasn’t commented on how it might reprimand the unidentified officer, but a spokesperson confirmed to the Free Press that they’ve opened an internal affairs investigation into how this whole mess happened.
And what a goddamn mess it is. First and foremost, obviously, cops shouldn’t be shit-faced on duty, regardless of if that duty involves killing time at some day-long training or whatever. But this whole story brings up a second, potentially even more explosive issue: How dumb do you have to be to voluntarily take a breathalyzer test when you’re supposed to be hiding the fact that you’re drunk at work? Any high school freshman who’s gotten weird before class could tell you to just sink down in your seat, bury your head in your arms, and avoid raising your hand at all costs.
Between this and those officers who called 911 on themselves after getting too blazed, it seems like cops could maybe use a workshop on, uh, not getting turnt on the job instead of another refresher on breathalyzers. What a world!
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