Nassau County in New York has recently stepped up its efforts to deter drunken driving by providing news media with the names, hometowns, and mugshots of its DWI arrestees. The idea is that if drunk people know getting arrested means they’ll be in the paper on Monday, then maybe that — if nothing else — will discourage them from getting behind the wheel.
The project is controversial, but that’s not what I wanted to tell you about. What I wanted to tell you about is one of the people they arrested over Memorial Day Weekend, a 17-year-old girl named [redacted because of her age, but it’s in the Gothamist article]. According to Newsday (via Gothamist), her blood-alcohol level was 0.15 percent, almost twice the legal limit of 0.08. (Actually, since she’s underage, her legal limit is 0.00.) But she swears she wasn’t drinking. Her explanation? “I didn’t drink! I was kissing a boy who was drunk!”
Mmhmm. Are you really gonna try to sell that one to a judge? Teenagers are hilarious. Did you ever make up an extraordinary lie to avoid trouble, and then stick to it no matter what? I know I did.
So that’s funny already, and then there’s this quote from her family’s lawyer: “To now have (the arrest) publicized is not only embarrassing, but demeaning as well.”
Really, egghead? It’s embarrassing? Yeah: that’s kind of the point. “Your Honor, this highly publicized effort to embarrass drunken drivers has resulted in my client, a drunken driver, being embarrassed!”
(Also: “Embarrassing” and “demeaning” are almost synonymous anyway, but we’ll let that pass.)
(Also: Maybe Nassau County shouldn’t mess with this girl. With a name like [redacted], she is almost certainly the daughter of someone with Mob ties.)
