Video and Reports of Former Utah State Senator's DUI Arrest to be Public

The Utah State Records Committee will release the three-hour long dash-cam video of former Utah state Sen. Sheldon Killpack's arrest for allegedly driving drunk. They will also release the Utah Highway Patrol's incident report. However, the release of the public records could be delayed by up to a month as the records committee has five days to sign an order stating its decision, and the Department of Public Safety has 30 days within which to appeal to the district court.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Killpack was stopped at 12:17 a.m. on January 15 and failed field sobriety tests. After Killpack refused a Breathalyzer test, a blood draw showed his blood-alcohol content at 0.11, which is above the legal limit of 0.08. Killpack resigned his political office the next day, and was charged with DUI and failure to signal.

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Police car camera reveals cover-up

Video from a dashboard police camera revealed that Hollywood, Fla., police officer Dewey Pressley wrote a fake police report to cover up for another officer, the AP reported. Officer Joel Francisco rammed into the back of Alexandra Torrens-Vilas' car. Torrens-Vilas was charged with a DUI and traffic violation, but "the state attorney's office dropped the charges, saying the video raised questions about the officers' account of the crash." "I'm gonna tell you exactly how to word this so we can get him off the hook," Pressley says on the video. Later he remarks: "I don't like making things up ever because it's wrong but if I have to bend it a little to protect a cop I'm gonna."

Veteran Hollywood Police Officer Dewey Pressley said he hated lying. But if bending the truth a little would keep a fellow officer out of trouble, well, he was all for it.

A dashboard police camera video that surfaced recently showed Pressley chuckling as he wrote a fake police report, calling his creativity "a little Walt Disney" so another officer wouldn't get in trouble for rear-ending a 23-year-old woman's car in February.

Pressley and four others have been suspended with pay pending an investigation after video of the accident and the officers' attempt to cover it up became public last week, the latest Internet sensation in a line of unsettling police dashcam videos.

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Ohio Supremes Protect Privacy of Drunk Drivers...All of 'Em.

The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected a newspaper's effort to get the names of all Ohioans convicted of drunken driving.

The court, without comment, voted 7-0 on Oct. 24 to dismiss a lawsuit filed by The Cincinnati Enquirer.

The state contended that the identities were protected by state and federal privacy laws.

The lawsuit followed a newspaper analysis in which the Enquirer reported finding nearly 36,000 drivers with five or more drunken-driving convictions in Ohio.

But state officials refused to provide access to the names in a database of records dating to 1973. Ohio Department of Public Safety Director Henry Guzman filed a motion to dismiss the newspaper's lawsuit, and the court agreed.

Jack Greiner, a Cincinnati attorney representing the Enquirer, called it disappointing that the Supreme Court dismissed the case without oral arguments or full legal briefs.

The Enquirer reported Oct. 24 that "the case raised a novel question concerning the interplay between federal law and the Ohio Open Records Act." The newspaper quoted Greiner as saying, “It is hard to imagine that Congress intended for the federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act to shield the identity of repeat DUI offenders. But that is the effect of today’s ruling.”

Assistant Attorney General William J. Cole, representing Guzman, said that the Enquirer could request driver information from each of Ohio’s 88 counties individually, the newspaper reported. The Enquirer has said such a project would take too long to be feasible.

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