TABC oversteps its bounds with alcohol arrests

Operation Last Call is the pithy nickname the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has given to its now-suspended program to arrest bar patrons. The program has left many people like me believing that this is simply the newest attempt of governing agencies in this state to legislate morality.

I’ve worked in the restaurant business for almost a decade now, and my experience with TABC’s methods is quite a bit different than the path they are embarking on now. Until Operation Last Call went into effect, TABC’s normal methods of policing bartenders and servers was to send in undercover minors to try to purchase alcohol. If servers fail to ID the customer, they are arrested on the spot and heavily fined.

TABC’s new policy, while still focusing on bartenders and servers, now includes arresting patrons on merely the suspicion of intoxication. Doctrines of preemption such as this rarely succeed, but more importantly, they violate the basic tenets that citizens in our society are innocent until proven guilty. This policy gives TABC officials full discretion to arrest anyone they want without any real proof that the guest is intoxicated at all.

Captain David Alexander, the Enforcement Director for the TABC’s Dallas Region who I interviewed for my article on the new program (see page 1), admits that Public Intoxication is much harder to prove in court than DWI, so the good news is that many of these arrests won’t hold up in court. The bad news is that the police state mentality the program injects into our community goes beyond law and order. It infringes on each of our rights.

But the problem isn’t the program itself. TABC’s intentions, on the surface, are good. They are simply trying to curb Texas’ outrageous number of alcohol-related motor-vehicle fatalities. The problem is that it is short-sighted, focusing on a symptom rather than the problem. DFW has no real viable way for bar customers to get themselves home in the event they have “one too many.” Public transportation is a joke, serving far too few areas to be effective. Oh, and by the way, they don’t operate during hours when bar patrons would need them anyway. A cab ride, due to the wide geography and even more widely-spreading development of the Metroplex, will cost more than most bar customers have on them at any given time.