Two Safford police officers were on a traffic stop on Highway 70 near McDonald’s last Sunday night at approximately 9:30 p.m., when a brown Dodge pickup suddenly stopped behind one of the officer’s patrol vehicle. The officer’s emergency lights were fully activated and the vehicles were as far off of the roadway as possible.
An officer approached the driver of the brown truck and asked why he stopped behind the officer’s vehicle. The driver replied that he didn’t know what to do and asked if it was okay to go around the officer’s car and keep driving.
The officer immediately noticed that the man’s speech was slurred and has eye’s were bloodshot and watery. There were three beer cans in the center console. Two of them were open and the third was closed.
Suspecting that the driver was intoxicated, the officer told him to exit the vehicle. The officer asked if the man had been drinking and the man said, ‘no.’ The officer then asked why the man had beer in the center console of his truck. The man claimed that the cans were empty and that he was just using them to spit tobacco. The officer retrieved the open beer cans and found that one of them was half full of cold beer and the other was being used for tobacco spit.
The officer again asked the man if he had consumed any alcohol and the man said, ‘no.’ The officer pointed out that there was an open can of beer in the truck. The man denied that the liquid in the beer can was actually beer.
The man was placed under arrest. He refused to perform field sobriety tests. After the contents of his vehicle were inventoried, it was towed from the scene.
The man was reportedly belligerent and disrespectful to the officers as they processed him at the police station.
