MONT BELVIEU, Texas -- An eight-month hidden camera investigation by Local 2 Investigates has uncovered a pattern by one police force that has allowed some habitual drunkenen drivers to avoid punishment and climb back behind the wheel.

"My guess is that the ramifications of what you've uncovered are going to be huge," said Karen Housewright, the executive director for the Mothers Against Drunken Driving in Texas. Her organization is asking the Texas Attorney General to launch an investigation in response to what Local 2 Investigates documented.

The Local 2 Investigates report focused on encounters with suspected drunken drivers in Mont Belvieu, a town of 2,600 east of Houston along Interstate 10 in Chambers County.

Beginning in October 2007 and continuing through this month, Local 2 Investigates found Mont Belvieu Police Department officers confronting suspected drunken drivers but then failing to arrest them on a driving while intoxicated charge. Instead, officers charged drivers with public intoxication or they allowed others to call friends to give them a ride home with no charges filed at all.

The most recent statistics available from Texas Department of Public Safety show Mont Belvieu reported only 11 DWI arrests in 2006. There were 17 DWI arrests reported to DPS in 2005.

By comparison, the Montgomery County town of Shenandoah Village has a similar-sized population and police force and it reported 88 DWI arrests for 2006.

On Oct. 5, 2007, Mont Belvieu police allowed a repeat offender to avoid his fourth DWI arrest, which would have certainly sent him back to prison. City records show Curtis Walker, 56, of Dayton, was pulled over after a motorist reported he nearly collided with another car in traffic.

The Mont Belvieu officer wrote in his report that Walker smelled strongly of alcohol.

"After speaking with him for several moments, it became apparent he was intoxicated," the officer wrote. "He was slurring and swaying as he stood. He admitted to having been drinking since morning."

State DPS crime records show Walker did three years in prison for his third DWI, a felony, in 1999. Before that, he served 50 days in jail for his second conviction in 1997. A fourth DWI arrest would have resulted in a high bail amount that would have assured his remaining off the streets, and a conviction would have sent him back to state prison for years.

Instead, he was arrested for public intoxication, which allowed him to get back behind the wheel of his car the following morning while avoiding the more severe punishment that his past drunken driving convictions would have required.

Another repeat drunken driver avoided his fourth DWI arrest on Feb. 17, 2008. Audio recordings of the call to Mont Belvieu police reflected an off-duty Baytown police officer was following a driver who seemed to be passing out while swerving in traffic.

"He's just weaving in every lane," said the police officer. "He just ran me off the road a while ago. His head just kept dropping. It looked like he was passing out."

The audio tape documents the officer remaining with the drunken driver until a Mont Belvieu officer arrived.

DPS crime records show Robert Young Holland, 45, of Baytown, had already served three years in state prison for his felony third DWI conviction in 1999. He served 50 days in the Harris County Jail for his second conviction in 1997. He was still on parole when he was caught by Mont Belvieu police, but he was booked only on a charge of public intoxication, a misdemeanor that is not a moving violation. He was able to drive again the following morning after release from jail.

Mont Belvieu city leaders declined to answer questions about their handling of drunken drivers, so a motive is unclear. However, a DPS official in Austin pointed out that the city collects more revenue for misdemeanor public intoxication charges, while the more serious drunken driving arrest sends more money to the county and the state. The Texas Comptroller spells out how fines are divided.

Housewright reacted to the less serious charges and the repeat offenders avoiding prison saying, "Unless (they are) held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, the message is going to be that behavior is acceptable and we're going to tolerate it in this community. And that's serious. It frightens me personally."

She said the police are actually causing more people to drive drunken, putting families in danger because the word typically spreads when police are lenient on certain crimes.

"They find out that, 'Hey, I can do this and I can get away with it, too.' That's the message and in fact it's causing more people to drink and drive, not less," she said.

In some cases documented by Local 2 Investigates, the suspected drunken drivers were not even written a ticket. They were allowed to call friends to pick them up.

In one case, police reports reflect Mont Belvieu police stopped a motorist for "investigation." The 40-year-old driver told Local 2 Investigates, "I got pulled over because they said that I was driving around like a madman. He said, 'Well, you're drunken!'"

He said the officer told him to call someone to pick him up, "or else I'm going to jail."

On Nov. 3, 2007, police reports indicate citizens reported a drunken driver. State DPS records show the driver is a three-time offender whose probation was revoked, sending him to prison for six years on his latest drunken driving conviction. Instead of going to prison for a fourth DWI, he was allowed to hitch a ride with a friend. The police report states, "Subject can pick up keys tomorrow." His car was left in a strip center parking lot overnight.

On Jan. 5, 2008, a convicted drunken driver from Harris County was stopped and then driven to the police station so that family could pick him up. The caller is on tape telling dispatchers, "It's swerving all over the road. It's not doing it sporadically. It's just going side to side, side to side."

As a Mont Belvieu police car closes in, the officer is heard on tape saying, "I'm behind him northbound. I'm fixing to stop him, traffic."

Minutes later, the officer tells his dispatchers, "We're trying to get one of his sons to come pick him up."

The officer wrote in his police report that the 54-year-old man was "not under the influence of any alcohol and advised he'd only taken his prescription 30 mg tablet of Morphine this morning. He appeared to be in use of most of his faculties, but I was concerned about his slow driving and weaving."

On May 3, police received a call that three people were passed out in a car at a stop light in Mont Belvieu. The officer determined all three were unfit to drive, but no charges were filed. On dispatch tapes, the officer asks his dispatcher to call someone at a nearby chemical plant to give all three of them a ride, since the driver was an employee of that plant.

The man who called police said, "I thought they were dead." He said the occupants slept through two light cycles, so he opened the door and shook the driver, but he would not wake up. He said he did not smell alcohol, but added, "I couldn't tell if they were drunken because I'm not a cop." He said the officers arrived and gave the driver field sobriety tests.

The police report makes no mention of alcohol, but the officer told his dispatcher that all three would need a ride.

On May 21, officers pulled over a repeat drunken driver on F.M. 565 and Eagle Drive. He had served time in prison after his felony third DWI, but officers allowed him to call someone for a ride after being pulled over.

In declining to answer questions from Local 2 Investigates, Mont Belvieu City Manager Bryan Easum sent an e-mail denying that a pattern exists for the handling of drunken drivers. His full letter is posted on this site.

He admitted that one of the encounters in the Local 2 Investigates report was mishandled by his officers. He agreed that a DWI arrest should have been made in that case, but he did not elaborate.

"The incident has been reviewed with the officer involved and I am confident he will not repeat the mistake," Easum wrote.

The city manager defends his officers' actions in the remaining encounters, writing, "The reports do not reflect the totality of what occurred during each incident."

Easum wrote that drunkenen drivers were not allowed to get back on the road in short order. "In none of the cases was anyone impaired allowed to get back into a vehicle and drive away."

His letter did not address the repeat offenders who were allowed to drive again the following day, instead of facing heavier penalties with a drunken driving arrest.

Easum's letter continued, "In several of the incidents, we found the parties outside the vehicle. We confronted the individuals before they got back into their vehicle. In those cases, we would much rather file a lesser charge than risk them getting back on the road or starting a high-speed pursuit."

His letter asserts that KPRC Local 2 did not actually investigate. He wrote, "You are free to practice sensationalist journalism, and I am free not to participate."

A written statement from Texas MADD said the organization is "gravely concerned regarding the details uncovered by KPRC-TV that appear to demonstrate a troubling disregard for DWI enforcement in the city of Mont Belvieu, Texas."

Housewright blamed city leaders for discouraging field level police officers who know the real dangers of drunken driving. She said the drunkens who were documented as avoiding punishment in the Local 2 Investigates report are now free to endanger other families.

"There are people who are getting away with it left and right, and Lord knows how many people have been injured or even killed by these very same people," she said.

Response:

Mont Belvieu City Manager's Full Statement