ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Albuquerque police make thousands of DWI arrests every year. Some of them take a lot of work and are just downright strange.
You didn't have to be a DWI expert to see Misty Yates would probably fail a Breathalyzer. And while she even gets the cops laughing at one point there's nothing funny about her being behind the wheel.
From the second an Albuquerque cop spots Yates he knows things aren't right.
A tipster alerted cops to Yates at the Family Dollar near San Antonio and San Pedro earlier this month. It's around four in the afternoon.
“Have you been drinking?” the officer asked.
“Not since 7 o'clock this morning,” Yates said.
“Well, your voice is really slurring and your eyes are...” but before the officer can get the rest out Yates interrupts, saying, “I am diabetic.”
She starts in with the excuses right away. When another officer tries to get her to blow into a field Breathalyzer she tells him she’s got pneumonia and is a smoker.
When cops ask her to get out and perform field tests one of the officers can't help but laugh at Yates. Even Yates seems to notice it and starts smiling during the tests.
When it comes time to walk the line, Yates has another excuse; the boots she’s wearing. They let her take off the boots, but the antics don't stop.
When it’s her turn to perform the test she tells the officers, “Lord, you're making it hard on me.”
She doesn't do too well on the test.
When the officer arrests her, Yates says, “Really? I can't have somebody come get me? They are just two blocks away. Please work with me on this, officer.”
Inside her truck, a pint of whiskey.
Linda Atkinson with the Victims' Rights Project says even though it may seem shocking to see someone this blitzed at this time of day, “A lot of our high (blood-alcohol content) offenders are getting arrested or in crashes middle of the afternoon.”
In fact, she says that's when the most serious alcoholics are on the road, “for the high BAC drivers in the analysis that we did it was one and two in the afternoon.”
Since Yates had so many excuses, cops have paramedics check her out and even let her do the field tests again.
Yates was charged with aggravated DWI because cops say her blood-alcohol level was at least twice the legal limit. This was Yates first DWI.
Her DWI arrest was just one of forty-three APD made over the first weekend of this month.
