De Pere Prima Donna Goes Out of Her Way to Get Arrested

A Wauwatosa police officer gave a De Pere woman four chances Friday to find a ride home rather than be arrested for drunken driving, but she stubbornly refused and ended up with a serious citation and needing a ride anyway.

At 12:25 a.m. Friday, a patrol officer saw the 33-year-old woman driving erratically and pulled her over in the 800 block of North Mayfair Road. The woman had continued driving three blocks after the officer turned on his emergency lights and “blipped” his siren twice.

When the officer asked her if she had been drinking that evening, she did not answer for nearly a minute until a passenger in the car told her to do so, then said she had her last drink about two hours earlier on Milwaukee's East Side.

The officer smelled a moderate amount of intoxicants on her breath and asked her to take a field sobriety test. She agreed and performed the tests well, but joked throughout and insisted on performing several of the tests in ballet poses and spins. When asked to recite the alphabet from A to Z, she said she could recite it backward, then turned her back on the officer and said it forward.

The officer told her he thought she was borderline impaired and that he was not going to arrest her but wanted her to take a cab home for her own safety. The officer noted in his report that she responded, “I’m sorry you feel that way” and that her attitude abruptly changed.

He again said he didn’t want to arrest her but didn't want her to drive, and she began to argue and interrupt. For a third time he said he wasn’t going to arrest her but wanted her to get a ride and wanted no more excuses. She said, “Sir, you are telling me excuses, so what’s your verdict?”

After a fourth admonishment that she had to get a ride, she argued and refused, so the officer decided to arrest her for operating while intoxicated. She resisted being handcuffed and refused to walk to the squad car, saying she was not under arrest. She refused seven requests to get into the car and only did so under the threat of force.

At the station, she would not reply to repeated requests for a breath sample and said she would not proceed without a lawyer. Told she was not entitled to a lawyer at that time, she continued to argue until finally the officer marked her down as refusing the breath test.

That meant a trip to the hospital for a blood draw.

The woman refused to stand up or be handcuffed again, so the officer had to grab her by the arm and force her to stand, and it took two officers to get her back in cuffs. During the ride to the hospital, she repeatedly said, “(Expletive) cops, (expletive) union workers, I pay your salary.”

At the hospital, she said that police would not get any of her blood, and when taken to an examining room she would not sit down until forced. When the officer tried to remove her handcuffs, she tried to dig her fingernails into his wrist, and he had to push her over face-first on the bed and finally hit her once in the back with a closed fist.

The officer then handcuffed her by one hand to the bed and held her while a nurse completed the blood draw. She was issued a citation for OWI with a passenger under 16 – her 12-year-old son, who was in the van at the time of the stop.

In the end, the woman had plenty of time to stew about how she had been treated: She had to wait for a ride that came from Green Bay.

While waiting, she showed the arresting officer bruises on her arm and said, “You are in big trouble” and that he would be getting fired soon because she knew a state senator.