Didn’t shoot anything but there he was, 2 guns, in the parking lot where the guy got killed last week.
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I guess there is a statute in Utah about having a gun while drunk in public. Personally, if the guy is quietly passed out why should the cops roust him? In other countries if the guy is passed out in public but not blocking the sidewalk and not passed out in the middle of the busiest intersection in town, the cops ignore him, after first checking that he is actually alive. Of course that is the difference between a peace officer and a LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER! The gun was apparently unloaded if the magazine was in a cup holder and the gun was on the floorboard. So I wonder if the “possession of a firearm while drunk” will actually stick.
This seems like a non-event where I normally would expect more common sense. Utah does have a concealed carry law although in this case it was hardly concealed. Do they have an open carry law? Do they have a law about carrying while intoxicated — and he was. .175 is pretty blasted.
This is the same parking lot where a guy was shot dead last weekend. The SLPD are making a show of force in this area. I heard on the news they confiscated several guns in this area in the las few days, don’t know the circumstances.
To your question Open Carry has been legal here for ever, we used to have to get a CCP but that went away last year with our Constitutional Carry Law passing.
In the Stone Age, when I was a cop, being drunk in public landed you in the drunk tank to sober up. But then the courts declared that being drunk was not a crime punishable by imprisonment, but rather, a disease, an addiction. So the state invested in treatment centers where you could take drunks to replace the “drunk and disorderly” arrest practice.
Day 1, they instantly filled to overcapacity, so, in the end, there was no place to take people who were drunk and passed out in public unless they committed some crime other than being drunk in public. Worst days for drunks was when the VA and other government checks were mailed out.
I was also part of the first DUI team. My partner and I held the record for the most arrests in the state (Colorado) for some time. After we did this for 6 months or so and processed several hundred drunk driver, I ran some basic stats. The AVERAGE blood alcohol level of the people we handled was 0.22, and average age around 35. And those people were driving. A BAC of 0.175 in Utah is not so bad by comparison.
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Even with drunk drivers, as long as they haven’t committed a driving offense, just take the license from the car and have it hauled to an impound lot where the driver can retrieve it when sober after paying the towing charge and storage fee. HOWEVER, the license for the car should be held for some previously determined period of time per statute. I don’t care if someone drinks to excess, just like I don’t care if you are in love with chickens or donkeys. I do care very much if they operate a motor vehicle while drunk. So take away the instrumentality of the offense, the license to the car. The drunk can park his car in the driveway, you are not depriving him of his personal property, you are just depriving him of the means to operate it on a public highway. So what’s to keep him from borrowing or stealing a license plate, you ask. Ahh therein lies the rub. Catch someone operating a motor vehicle with a borrowed license plate the car itself gets impounded. Should the owner of the plate came it was stolen, he must go to court and get a court order finding that he has proven that the plate was stolen; that he took sufficient precautions to prevent such theft from occurring. Should the court so find, then the drunk is charged with stealing a license plate which is a felony punished by 3 years in jail and an order to reimburse the owner of the plate for attorney fees and court costs. And for towing and storage fees while the determination is made as to the guilt or innocence of the drunken driver. As to drunk in public, why should being intoxicated in public in and of itself be a crime? If a drunk is sleeping in an alley, out of the way of movement of traffic, why should that be a crime? In Japan, if the drunk is passed out in his own neighborhood and the local police box officer finds him, more often than not he will take the drunk home. What has the drunk done to warrant jailing at taxpayer expense? I am not talking about the violent drunk who is smashing up property. I am not talking about the drunk beating up wife and kids. No, I am talking about the quiet — what the folks who study alcoholism call the working alcoholic. Drinks himself into a stupor every night but gets up and goes off to work every morning. Occasionally passes out on the way home or lays down behind a dumpster just to catch a quick nap but actually is passed out. Or even if he is passed out on the sidewalk just so long as he is not blocking passageway.
So is there an actual crime in the penal code of carrying while intoxicated? Or is that a made up crime as in CA where cops charge “possession of an unregistered firearm” when there is no requirement that firearms purchased years before the registration of all sales went into effect be registered? We used to call it the, “Throw enough muckem against the wall with charges and something is liable to stick” form of charging crimes. DAs more interested in their conviction rate than anything else use it all the time. The most recent egregious use of that method of charging was the Rittenhouse case where the accused was charged with two death penalty charges and curfew violation, a citable misdemeanor. You’re wasting court time proving up a citation offense during a first degree, two-count death penalty case? Are you for real or did you go to the LA Law school of jurisprudence? The judge should have referred the DA to the bar association for disbarment and held him in contempt of court for other offenses and fined him and collected it, but they were both democrats and the judge lacked the cojones to do so.
| Index | Utah Code |
|---|---|
| Title 76 | Utah Criminal Code |
| Chapter 10 | Offenses Against Public Health, Safety, Welfare, and Morals |
| Part 5 | Weapons |
| Section 528 | Carrying a dangerous weapon while under influence of alcohol or drugs unlawful. |
(Effective 5/3/2023)|
Effective 5/3/2023
76-10-528. Carrying a dangerous weapon while under influence of alcohol or drugs unlawful.
(1) It is a class B misdemeanor for an actor to carry a dangerous weapon while under the influence of:
(a) alcohol as determined by the actor’s blood or breath alcohol concentration in accordance with Subsections 41-6a-502(1)(a) through (c); or
(b) a controlled substance as defined in Section 58-37-2.
(2) This section does not apply to:
(a) an actor carrying a dangerous weapon that is either securely encased, as defined in this part, or not within such close proximity and in such a manner that it can be retrieved and used as readily as if carried on the person;
(b) an actor who uses or threatens to use force in compliance with Section 76-2-402;
(c) an actor carrying a dangerous weapon in the actor’s residence or the residence of another with the consent of the individual who is lawfully in possession;
(d) an actor under the influence of cannabis or a cannabis product, as those terms are defined in Section 26B-4-201, if the actor’s use of the cannabis or cannabis product complies with Title 26B, Chapter 4, Part 2, Cannabinoid Research and Medical Cannabis; or
(e) an actor who:
(i) has a valid prescription for a controlled substance;
(ii) takes the controlled substance described in Subsection (2)(e)(i) as prescribed; and
(iii) after taking the controlled substance, the actor:
(A) is not a danger to the actor or another individual; or
(B) is capable of safely handling a dangerous weapon.
(3) It is not a defense to prosecution under this section that the actor:
(a) is licensed in the pursuit of wildlife of any kind; or
(b) has a valid permit to carry a concealed firearm.
Colorado is an “implied consent” state where the law, by virtue of granting a driver’s license assumes that drivers have given their consent to a test of their blood, breath or urine for purposes of determining their blood alcohol. People who refuse the test lose their license to drive in an administrative hearing for refusing to take the test. People convicted of DUI usually lose their license, their insurance, their security clearances, and often their jobs. Multiple DUIs can result in a person being declared a habitual criminal, a felony offense.
That said, there are loads of people who drive without a license. Lots of the DUIs I handled were driving cars that belonged to someone else (spouses, parents, siblings, friends, etc) 'cause they had a previous DUI and lost their license and insurance. Lots of otherwise law abiding people have DUIs on their records and don’t stop driving.
Catch me if you can.
Hunter Biden’s gun offense was possession of a firearm by an individual addicted to drugs or alcohol.
Funny thing is – in a horrifying way – that the social safety arguments advanced by those who wish to ban guns are the same arguments advanced by those who sought to ban alcohol during Prohibition or ban drugs during the last 50 years of the failed war on drugs.
“Alcohol destroys families and lives. We should make alcohol illegal.”
“Drugs destroy families and lives. We should make drugs illegal.”
“Guns are used to injure and kill people. We should make guns illegal.”
When I lived in Utah, alcohol was sold by the State of Utah in state liquor stores, so the guy you saw probably got his liquor from a state employee.
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Still the same,
" The Utah DABS oversees the sale and distribution of liquor and alcoholic products in Salt Lake City and across the state."
CA has very similar laws and I agree that many folks drive without license or insurance. On the DUI checkpoints that the local departments periodically run the biggest number of folks snagged ar w/o license, insurance, expired registration. For every DUI that is snagged, probably 4 are for no license, insurance, expired registration, I certainly want to get those folks off the road. Our local sheriff’s dept ran a sting operation. Folks in traffic court whom the judge had sentenced to lose their license were followed out of the courtroom by plain clothes officers and were reported to uniformed patrol officers if they climbed into their cars in the courthouse parking lot. There were so many snagged driving away immediately after their license was revoked that the effort had to be abandoned because the sheriff’s department couldn’t spare that many officers writing tickets for driving with suspended/revoked license. Almost 100% of the folks who had just had their license suspended or revoked went out in the parking lot and got in their cars to drive away. That’s why I want to see the license plate pulled off the car. That makes it hard to drive away. That’s
why I want to see the cars impounded and as a last resort, be unable to be registered in the state of offense. The car must be transferred out of state. Either that, or chopped up into little pieces and sent to China or India to make cars for their countries. As when one commits a crime with a gun, one loses ownership of that particular firearm. So I want to make it that when one commits a crime with a vehicle, the car is lost to that particular owner. I don’t care if the owner lent the car to his gan banging buddy, if the car is used in a crime the car goes to the grinder to be shipped overseas or wherever, not to be on the streets of the U.S. forever more.
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I understood that having the state control the sale and distribution of alcohol was a left over from Prohibition (the gift that keeps on giving). In theory, the state could reduce the negative externalities of alcohol. Hasn’t worked as planned, but at this point changing 80+ year old bureaucracy would be politically overwhelming.
I found it bizarre to buy a bottle of wine from the state liquor store, then take my wine in a paper bag to the restaurant that would then charge me a corkage fee to open and pour my wine.
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16 year old son borrows mom’s car that she uses to commute to work.
16 year old son goes to a party with friends. Drinking happens.
16 year old son realizes that he’s too drunk to drive, so asks his friend, who does not appear to be drunk, to drive him home.
The pair get stopped. Cops smell liquor from inside the car. Friend who is driving refuses to take the breathalyzer test, so you don’t know whether he has been drinking or, if he has been drinking, whether he’s over the legal limit. The car is impounded, the friend goes to jail. The 16-year old drunk son walks home.
Under your proposal, mom loses her car and probably her job. Taxpayers pick up the bill for her family’s support.
I assume for some reason the Utah legislature used the word “actor” to mean person. Interesting word usage.
In a sinde note one of the cities in this country ran a DUI checkpoint last night and apprehended one DUI driver and wrote citations for 27 license violations. A license violation could be anything from not having one’s license while operating a motor vehicle to expired, suspended or revoked license or operating a motorcycle without a motorcycle endorsement or driving a truck without the commercial vehicle endorsement. There may be other license violations more esoteric than the ones listed that I am not aware of. But 27 in the space of four hours and, of course, we don’t know how many drivers realized there was a checkpoint and turned away from it. CA law requires that there be a route where drivers may avoid the checkpoint. These 27 were the ones too dumb to realize there was a checkpoint just up the road, ignoring the warning sign.
In Utah they actually announce the Check Point locations.
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Almost every time somebody gets sentenced to jail or prison, the defense attorney argues that the criminal’s wife, girlfriend, elderly mother, father, children are going to go on welfare and be on the public dole. Like the saying goes, if you can’t do the crime, don’t do the crime. Sixteen year old should not be drinking period. Mom should, perhaps, not have so much trust that sonny boy is going to use good sense. That’s the drawback to irresponsible behavior. Too frequently, someone close to the criminal (however minor) usually gets hurt and the hurt comes out of the blue. Just this morning on the news the family is demanding answers why their son was shot by the cops when he pointed a stun gun at them. He leaves behind a young son — not a widow, our darling son wasn’t married to the young son’s mother. My bet is that he wasn’t paying child support either, so my question is what kind of a father runs from the cops for a minor traffic stop and what idiot points a stun gun at a cop armed with a real gun? Suicide by cop? Why? Because he doesn’t want to go back to prison would be my guess. Why did he run from the cops for a traffic violation? Felony warrant out for his arrest? He had a felony quantity of dope in his car? He was under the influence of some perception altering substance? My guess is the family won’t want to hear the answers to those questions. Perhaps if there were more consequences for crime there might not be so much of it. I’m really a hardness? Yeah, guilty as charged. After 25 years of watching what was going on in our court system I had enough and left working in that corrupt system. Notice I didn’t call it a justice system. Don’t search for justice in our court system, you won’t find it there.
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Don’t need a checkpoint to catch DUIs. Just drive around downtown in the evening. I had several shifts where I never got further than 6-7 blocks from the station in downtown. Just look for the guy driving on 4 flat tires or driving down the street with the front of his car caved in. Catching 8-10 DUIs a night in any big city is not a subtle thing.
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In addition, in CA the checkpoints must be identified by a size-specified sign advising that a police checkpoint is ahead and it must be located in a place that allows drivers to avoid going through the checkpoint. So one must be so smashed on perception altering substances as to not comprehend that they are going to be stopped and at least questioned a short distance after the cross street where the sign is located. I don’t know about state-wide, but in this county the sign not only is about 5’x6’ but is also illuminated so that it can be read at a distance.
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