NO, I HAVEN'T DRANK. >> AND I like you to do A FIELD SOBRIETY JUST RELAX. RELAX. [laughter] >> Please don't do this TO ME. PLEASE. I HAVE GENERALIZED ANXIETY AND MY MOM IS COMING. >> A car moved too quickly through a Cranston, Rhode Island neighborhood one night, then began behaving like a vehicle trying not to be seen, cutting down side streets, sliding into a parking lot, and switching off its headlights as if darkness might make it disappear. It didn't. A sergeant had already followed it in. By the time he reached the window, the driver wasn't waiting to be asked anything. >> [music] >> She was pleading. A panic attack, she told him. Please don't arrest me. >> [music] >> The words tumbled out fast and frightened, an apology chasing an apology >> [music] >> before a single question had even been posed. What unspooled from there was not a quick encounter. Over the next stretch of footage, a woman named Catherine would beg, [music] argue, phone her mother and her boyfriend, refuse a sobriety test, and fight an arrest, all while insisting, [music] again and again, that she'd done nothing wrong. It is a hard watch, and it deserves a careful one, because tangled [music] up in the drinking and the defiance is something more human, a person coming apart in real time. >> Okay. Step out. Get out of your car. You get out of the car or the window gets smashed. Get out of the car. >> Officer? >> Get out of the car. >> For what? >> Get out of the car. >> For what? >> Get out of the car. >> No. >> Get out of the car. >> No. >> Do yourself a favor and just get out. >> No, please. No, please. I'm sorry. Please. I'm very scared. I have generalized anxiety. >> Okay, listen. Here's the deal. All right. If you have such anxiety, okay, you're flying down the road, then you try ducking me down some side streets, pulling into a parking lot, and shutting your lights off pretending I didn't see you. >> That wasn't WHAT IT WAS. I WAS PULLING OFF THIS >> MENTION, you don't have a license. >> I do have a license. >> No, it's not. >> It is. >> My license is not suspended. >> Okay, I just ran it. The state of >> My license >> Stop. >> As of when? >> As of last year. >> No, my license is >> Why why are we screaming? Why are we screaming? >> Because my license Jimmy, they're saying my license is suspended as of last year. No, my license should be >> Can you come get her? >> Jimmy, can Jimmy, ARE YOU ARE YOU LISTENING? NO. >> STOP. >> JIMMY, ARE YOU LISTENING TO THEM? >> JIMMY, is there any way you can come get her? >> Yeah, I can come get her. >> Come get her, please. >> They're saying Jimmy, they're saying my license is suspended. >> Stop. Why are you screaming? >> JIMMY, SHUT UP. >> OOF. >> THEY ARE SAYING MY license is suspended as of >> Her distress read is genuine, and it's worth saying plainly, anxiety and panic attacks are real, and a person in the grip of one is not simply performing. The trouble was that her fear expressed itself [music] as a torrent of words, confessions, excuses, apologies that kept surfacing details she'd have been far better off leaving unsaid. She mentioned an unpaid boot, an old obligation, reasons she hadn't wanted to stop. The sergeant, for his part, tried more than once to slow her down. "Why would I arrest you?" he asked, almost puzzled by the pleading. [music] >> THEY'RE SAYING MY LICENSE IS SUSPENDED as of last year. >> you Have you had anything to drink tonight? Behind the counter >> got off of work. >> At a bar? >> They just said that my license is suspended as of what? >> on. >> Stop talking, Jimmy. Jimmy. >> Then, more bluntly, he urged her to simply stop talking, that every sentence was digging the hole deeper. It was, in its rough way, sound advice, but she couldn't take it. That inability to pause, to breathe, to let the situation settle, would define the entire encounter. Whatever was driving her, the panic she named, the alcohol she hadn't yet admitted, [music] or both braided together, it kept her locked in a spiral where every attempt to help her landed >> [music] >> as another threat to fight off. >> Excuse me. No, officer. >> You're you're you're working your way into jail, okay? I'm going to tell you that right now. Just stop talking and let me talk to Jimmy. >> My license as suspended, Jimmy. Jimmy, no. Jimmy, they said my sus- license was suspended AS OF LAST YEAR. I'M CALLING MOMMY. >> She >> I'll be calling Mommy. >> If you talk to Mommy like that, I'm sure she's going to hang up on you, too. >> You know what? I was just I was having Jimmy come pick you up, but you hung up on him, so I couldn't even tell him where you're at. >> The sergeant laid out what he'd watched. She'd been flying down the road, he said, then tried losing him through side streets before parking and going dark. Hardly the behavior of someone with nothing to hide. Her explanation, that she was scared and being followed, didn't square with a driver who'd been speeding before any lights appeared behind her. Then came the detail [music] that hardened the stop. He'd run her license, and it came back suspended. Had been, he told her, since the previous [music] year. She rejected it outright. Her license was fine, she insisted. It had been reinstated in court. Round and round that disagreement went, her volume rising with each pass, his answer unchanged. The system says suspended. >> You don't have a license. >> I do have a license. >> No, it's not. >> It is. >> No, my license is not suspended. >> Okay, I just ran it. The state of >> Stop. >> As of when? >> As of last year. >> No, my license is >> Why Why are we screaming? Why are we screaming? >> Because my license >> Hey, hey. >> Jimmy, they're saying my license is suspended as of last year. >> Oh, no. >> No, my license, Jimmy. >> Can you come get her? >> Listen to them. >> Jimmy, can Jimmy, ARE YOU ARE YOU LISTENING? NO. >> STOP. >> JIMMY, ARE YOU LISTENING to them? >> Jimmy, is there any way you can come get her? >> I'm Yeah, I can come get her. >> Come get her, please. >> They're saying Jimmy, they're saying my license is suspended. >> Stop. Why are you screaming? >> JIMMY, SHUT UP. >> WOOF. >> THEY ARE SAYING MY license is suspended as of >> They just asked me if I could come get you. I can come get you right now. >> ARE YOU LISTENING, JIMMY? >> I YEAH. >> THEY'RE SAYING MY LICENSE IS SUSPENDED as of last year. >> Are you having anything to drink tonight? BEHIND THE >> I JUST GOT off of work. >> At a bar? >> Where do I come get you? >> They just said that my license is suspended as of last year. >> Stop talking. Jimmy. >> I can come get you. >> Jimmy. >> Excuse me. No, officer. >> Stop talking. >> You're You're You're working your way into jail, okay? I'm going to tell you that right now. Just stop talking and let me talk to Jimmy. >> My license is suspended, Jimmy. Jimmy, no. Jimmy, they said my license My license is suspended as of last year. I'm calling Mommy. >> No, you shut up. [ __ ] >> I'll be calling Mommy. >> If you talk to Mommy like that, I'm sure she's going to hang on you, too. >> You know what? I was just I was having Jimmy come pick you up, but you hung up on him, so I couldn't even tell him where you're at. >> Mommy is uh Hedwig highway. >> I don't care what your mommy mommy is. You could be the president of the United States. >> Hi mommy. Um so, I'm driving home from work and these these officers are saying that my license has been suspended since last year. >> No, that was reinstated when you went to court. >> I'm telling you right now, I just ran it and it comes back as suspended. >> Yeah, my license comes back as suspended. So, I'm sitting right outside of Taco. >> No, you're about a mile away. >> Taco's right there. >> This isn't This isn't Taco. >> Yep. >> Whether she truly believed it was valid or simply couldn't accept the news in that moment is impossible to know. Either way, driving on a suspended license was now stacked onto [music] the pile and the encounter had shifted from a speeding stop towards something with real legal teeth before the question of alcohol had even fully entered the frame. Reaching for lifelines, she got her boyfriend, Jimmy, on the phone and then her mother. The officers were genuinely trying to use those calls constructively. If someone could come collect her, they indicated, this might end with her going home rather than to a cell. >> [music] >> That off-ramp was real and it was offered more than once. She sabotaged it herself rather than let Jimmy get directions to her location, she screamed over him, hung up and dialed again. Her mother's response, weary and pointed, cut through the noise. If you're going to act like that, you're going to end up in trouble. It was the voice of someone who had clearly been here before. That exhaustion in the mother's tone [music] is one of the quietest, saddest notes in the whole recording. >> That's Taco. That is Taco. >> I'm watching you how to drink tonight. >> I'm I'm He's He's being a What's your What's your badge number? >> Sergeant DeCosta. >> Sergeant DeCosta. >> Listen, it's all on camera. You you I don't I It's all on camera, the whole thing. So, that's not really helping It doesn't help in your case. >> I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG. >> Where are you going? >> This was not a parent shocked by a one-off crisis. It was a parent recognizing a familiar storm, trying from a mile away to talk a grown daughter down from a ledge she seemed determined to leap off, and being screamed at for the effort. Underneath everything sat the fact she kept circling without confronting. Pressed on how much she'd had, she deflected. [music] She'd been at work all night, she said, and work was a bar. When she climbed out of the car to shout in the sergeant's face, >> [music] >> he noted a strong smell of alcohol on her breath. The kind of detail that turns suspicion into probable cause. On that basis, he asked her to perform field sobriety exercises. Her answer was immediate and absolute. No, she would not do them. He warned her clearly that refusing meant going to jail. It changed nothing. She repeated her refusal, >> [music] >> folding her arms around it like armor. >> Sir, >> You can read it. >> What is your badge number? No, I can't. I don't have my [ __ ] glasses. If I can't get out of my car. 408, what's yours? 513. >> Actually, you know what? 513. How much have you had to drink tonight? >> Um I was at work all night. >> Yep, and you work at a bar. When you stepped out of the car to scream in my face, I detected a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emanating from your breath. >> I'm >> So, I'm going to ask you to do a field sobriety test. >> I'm not doing it. >> Then you're going to go to jail. >> I'm not doing it. >> No, I'm not doing it. >> Step out of the car. >> Sir, I'm not doing it. >> Step out of the car. >> No. No, I'm not doing it. Don't do that to >> All you You did everything to yourself. >> You got out of it You got out of your car. >> There's a common misconception that declining a roadside test is a clever escape hatch. It isn't. An officer who already has speeding, evasion, a suspended license, and the smell of alcohol doesn't need a perfect field sobriety performance to make an arrest. >> [music] >> And refusing the test, far from ending the inquiry, simply removed her last chance to talk her way out of one. From here, the stop had only one direction left to travel. Ordered out of the car, she did something almost childlike in its desperation. She scrambled from the driver's seat over to the passenger side, as though putting distance [music] between herself and the door might undo the whole night. "Please don't do this to me," she begged. "This is the rest of my life." The officers gave her repeated last chances, [music] and each one dissolved into another refusal. >> Step out of the car. >> No, sir. >> Step out of the car. >> No, sir. >> All right, last chance you're going to want to jail. >> What's she doing? >> She's climbing in >> passenger seat of the car. >> No, sir. I'm not doing that. This is excessive. >> It's not excessive. I haven't We haven't done anything to you yet except Perhaps take you out of the car. >> you your badge number, and you made ME COME OUT OF THE CAR. I'm not doing this. Please don't DO THIS TO ME. PLEASE. This is the rest of my life. Please don't do this to me. >> You're doing this to yourself. Step out of the car. >> NO, I'M NOT. MY MOM'S AND SOMEBODY ELSE is coming in here. >> When they finally moved to take her into custody, she resisted, and the scene turned into a struggle to get her hands behind her [music] back and lower her safely to the ground. >> Please, sir. NO. >> NO. >> NO. >> I DON'T WANT TO TAKE YOU TO JAIL ANYWAY. >> NO, PLEASE. >> I'M NOT TAKING you to jail anyway. >> No. >> Get out of the car. I'm not taking you to JAIL ANYWAY, OKAY? >> [screaming] >> CAME IN HERE. I KNOW. >> I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING. NO. >> HEY, HEY, HEY. JUST PUT HER ON THE GROUND. PUT HER ON THE GROUND. THROUGH IT, she cried out for her mother, the raw, involuntary reflex of someone genuinely terrified, whatever the cause. It is the part of the footage that is hardest to reconcile. On one hand, an adult who drove drunk, fled, [music] and fought a lawful arrest. On the other, a person in what looked like real psychological collapse, >> [music] >> screaming for her mom in a parking lot. Both things were true at once, and the law can only act on one of them. The distress didn't erase the danger she'd posed on the road. >> Relax. >> Relax. >> Listen, relax. Relax. Relax. Just go down. Just go down. Just relax. Relax. >> Please don't do this to me. PLEASE. PLEASE. I AM DEBILITATED. PLEASE, MY mom is coming. MY MOM IS RIGHT THERE. MY MOM RIGHT THERE. RIGHT THERE. MY MOM is right there. >> No, your mom's not here. >> NO, SHE MY MOM IS RIGHT THERE. NO, PLEASE. PLEASE. NO, NO. >> LISTEN, do you have anything on you? >> No, nothing. >> Okay. >> Have what on me? >> Any narcotics or yourself? >> No. WHAT? NO, PLEASE. >> JUST SIT IN THE CAR. JUST SIT IN THE >> NO, PLEASE. GIVE me Give me my GIVE ME MY SLIPPER. IT'S MY JEWEL. >> ALL RIGHT, I got it. >> Relax. Relax. We got it. >> My jewel charger IS ON THE GROUND. PLEASE, JUST LET ME TAKE IT. >> THAT POCKET IS OPEN. >> PLEASE Can somebody fix my socks? >> Sit in the car. Sit in the car. Relax. >> PLEASE, CAN SOMEBODY FIX MY >> WE'LL FIX it in A SECOND. >> I AM DEBILITATED. I NEED MY XANAX. I NEED MY PLEASE, can somebody fix Please. Please. My mommy is coming. My mommy is coming. My mom >> At the station, an officer read her Rhode Island's implied consent law. The principle that, by driving on the state's roads, >> [music] >> a person has already agreed to a chemical test of breath, blood, or urine when lawfully arrested for impaired driving. She refused that as well, and so her actual blood alcohol level was never captured. There is no number attached to this case. That absence raises a fair question. Why didn't the officers simply obtain a warrant for her blood, as happens in many DUI cases? The likely answer is strategic. A warrant takes time and effort, and it's most valuable when a case needs shoring up. >> Colorado law requires you to submit to a chemical test of your blood, breath, or urine for the purpose of determining the chemical content of your body fluids or breath. You have the right to have an additional chemical test performed at your own expense. You'll be afforded a reasonable opportunity to exercise these rights. Access to a telephone will be made available for you to make those arrangements. Did you want to make a phone call? >> [snorts] >> I haven't been subjected to a field sobriety or an alcohol test. The only reason that it was so is because you asked me to read your badge number to get out of the car, and it it felt >> I don't recall me asking you to come >> Here, the record was already overflowing. The speeding, the hiding, the odor, the refusal, the behavior on camera. >> [music] >> When a case is that strong on its own, the missing number becomes a luxury, not a necessity. [music] Refusing the test also carries its own price, independent of the DUI. Under implied consent laws, saying no is itself a chargeable offense, often with an automatic license suspension attached. So, the refusal she may have imagined as protection instead became one more count against her, and left the only estimate of her impairment to be inferred from how she acted. >> You can do a field sobriety test, at which time you decided you wanted to climb from your driver seat to your passenger seat, and you kept saying no, you're not going to do it. >> reason I was outside of the driver seat was because you made me read your badge number. >> I didn't make you do anything, okay? >> He said, "What's my badge number?" and he made me get out of the driver seat. >> Everyone can leave the room. >> Yep. >> I would like to thank to mother. No, I don't like you. >> It doesn't matter if you like me or not. I am a I am a POLICE OFFICER. >> WHERE IS MY WHERE >> You can make a phone call right here. >> Where is my phone? >> I have your phone. >> Can I have it? >> You can make a phone call right here. >> Can I have it to find my phone number? >> In the end, the case resolved without a trial. Katherine entered a no contest plea to the DUI charge, which stands for practical purposes as a conviction, while the refusal and resisting counts were dismissed. Her sentence bundled together [music] the tools courts reach for in a first impaired driving case, a year of probation, a license suspension measured in months, 10 hours of community service, alcohol counseling, and several hundred dollars in fines and court costs. >> [music] >> Because she refused testing, no one can state her impairment as a fact. Any figure is an educated guess drawn from her conduct. The slurring, the volatility, the wild swings of emotion, which some observers would place well above the legal threshold. Treat that as an estimate and nothing firmer. The honest truth is her number is simply unknown, and it should be presented that way. Strip the [music] case to its center and it's a story about the distance between a feeling and a choice. The panic may well have been real, the anxiety, too. But panic doesn't put a person behind the wheel after a shift at a bar, and it doesn't turn a manageable stop into a fight. >> [music] >> Somewhere underneath the screaming for her mother was a young woman who needed help long before that night, and a mother a mile away [music] who already knew it and couldn't stop the storm from a phone. The court's counseling order may be the one piece of this that actually reaches the real problem. One can only hope it does. >> [music] [music] [music] >> Mhm.