D.C. Chief Defends Officers' Judgments in DUI Arrests

Another part of the code reads, in part, that no one "under the influence of any intoxicating liquor . . . [shall] operate or be in physical control of any vehicle in the District."

Ramsey said the important issue in drunken driving arrests is not the blood alcohol level but the level of impairment.

"I know people could have one-half of one drink and get very giddy. I know other people who could have an entire bottle and you'd barely know they've had a drink," he said. "To think you can have a threshold that can apply to everyone is foolish. We're all different. We all handle alcohol and other substances differently. I don't think you can ever take away judgment and discretion."

But Bolton and a number of others who have come forward with similar stories have begun to question the judgment of some officers.

One Thursday night two years ago, computer software worker Lamon Lyles, then 27, remembers following a friend out of a parking garage next to Club U and into a gas station, going the wrong way on a one-way street. They were pulled over and asked if they'd had anything to drink. Lyles said he'd had one Heineken because the next day was a workday. The officer gave him and his friend field sobriety tests and then had them blow into breath machines. Both, he said, registered 0.0 blood alcohol.

But Lyles was not released. He said that the police officer told him about D.C.'s zero tolerance policy. You drank one, Lyles recalls the officer telling him, so you're over the limit.

Lyles and his friend were kept overnight in a D.C. jail and taken to court to be arraigned at 9 a.m. There, he said, within two minutes, both cases were dropped. Lyles, who said the arrest prevented him from getting a top clearance to work at the National Security Agency, spent a year trying to clear the incident from his record.

D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the committee with oversight of the police department, also questioned the officer's judgment.

"How can you flunk a sobriety test with no alcohol in your system -- unless the officer didn't know what he was doing or had another agenda," he said. "I certainly will make some inquiries."