COPS, BOOZE AND GUNS

Recently, a cop buddy of mine sent me a copy of a Los Angeles Times story on the proposed ban against off-duty LASO deputies drinking while armed. That reminded me of a situation back in the '70s. At the time, League City was a small bedroom community in Galveston County (Texas) that unintentionally hosted a bunch of hard drinking off-duty cops from a neighboring county.

Why were those cops drawn to this sleepy little town? It was because the sheriff and the police chiefs in neighboring Brazoria County had issued orders forbidding any off-duty officers from drinking anywhere within the county. So what did the cops do? They discovered the La Oficina in League City, a bar that happened to be owned by a police officer.

Just about any night, but especially on weekends, the La Oficina was reminiscent of the old wild-west frontier saloon. Off-duty cops engaged each other in drunken knock-down and drag-out brawls. There were several shooting incidents inside the bar. It got so bad that the local police chief called on the sheriff and police chiefs of Brazoria County to issue orders forbidding their off-duty officers from coming to League City.

Police work has been described as 95 percent utter boredom and five percent sheer terror. It's the five percent that makes policing stressful. That's why cops drink a lot - alcohol is a great stress reliever - and that's why cops suffer from a high rate of alcoholism.

I used to teach my students that cops are most likely to get in trouble over wine, women and guns, not necessarily in that order. When you mix excessive drinking with guns, you have a potential disaster in the making. I am not a fan of LA sheriff Lee Baca, but in this case he is taking the right approach to an obvious problem.

Here is the Los Angeles times story:


SHERIFF TO BAN DEPUTIES FROM MIXING DRINKING, GUNS

LOS ANGELES – The sheriff of Los Angeles County plans to prohibit his off-duty deputies from carrying their guns while drinking because several have been accused in recent years of firing weapons while intoxicated.

Sheriff Lee Baca says there has been a disturbing rise in alcohol-fueled misbehavior among his deputies in the nation's largest sheriff's department.

Since 2004, more than a dozen deputies have been accused of brandishing or shooting a gun while under the influence of alcohol. At least 61 have been arrested this year on alcohol-related charges, 39 of them for driving under the influence, and most of them were armed at the time.

In April 2006, a rookie deputy who had at least 11 drinks while celebrating his return from Marine duty in Iraq shot and killed a friend.

It was unclear what caused the increase in incidents, but sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore noted Tuesday that the number of sworn deputies in the department has increased to more than 10,000. It also may be that other police agencies are making more arrests of intoxicated deputies instead of covering for them as they might have in the past.

"Thirty, 40 years ago, perhaps they would drive (deputies) home," Whitmore said.

He said the policy could be in place as early as January.

The deputies' union opposes the restriction. Union leader Steve Remige says it would let criminals know that deputies who had put them away would at times be unarmed.