Petaluma man beats DUI charge

<p>Petaluma investment advisor Christopher Irvin, was driving home from a Christmas party last year, after dancing for several hours and consuming two-plus glasses of wine, when a police officer pulled him over for drinking and driving.</p><p>Six months and $2,500 in attorney's fees later, Irvin beat the DUI charge because his blood alcohol tested below the legal limit. But he says his story is a cautionary tale for anyone who drinks a little at a party and thinks he can drive home without a hitch.</p><p>“It was the same route I took for 12 years when I was working in Sonoma — Lakeville to the D Street Bridge — when a cop stopped me and said he had spotted me slowing down for no reason when I passed him on the bridge,” Irvin said in the living room of his westside bungalow.</p><p>“I had turned left on Second Street, then right to Eighth Street, when I heard the officer coming up behind me. It was near Wickersham Park. He asked me if I had been drinking and I said yes. Later, my attorney said that was my first mistake.”</p><p>According to Irvin, it was 11:30 p.m., and he and his wife, who is a bass player and vocalist with two local bands, had been partying and dancing since 5:30 that afternoon. He said he had two glasses of wine and part of a third glass that he'd left unfinished while he danced.</p><p>“I said (to the officer) I count my drinks because I get sick to my stomach if I drink too much,” Irvin recalled.</p><p>The officer, Nick Racconello, gave Irvin a breath test and told him to walk a straight line, one foot in front of the other. According to a police report of the incident, because Irvin tested .08 percent on the breath test, Officer Racconello arrested him and took him to the police station.</p><p>Irvin said at the station a second officer retested his blood alcohol level, found a reading of .07, and told him not to expect a DUI charge.</p><p>But, a week later, he was charged with driving under the influence and saw his name in the Argus Courier in a story about holiday DUI arrests.</p><p>“I was shocked,” he said. The ‘good cop' told me nothing would happen.”</p><p>After three court appearances and a conference with an assistant district attorney, the DA's office dropped the DUI charge and Irvin pled "no contest" to three moving violations.</p><p>Irvin says he sees the whole episode as a sham and a way to bring in revenue, but Sgt. Ken Savano, head of traffic enforcement for the Petaluma Police Department, has a different point of view.</p><p>“The arrest was totally appropriate,” he said in a telephone interview. “I feel the DA took it seriously and gave it the proper amount of weight.”</p><p>Reading from the initial report, Savano said Racconello saw a driver in a Subaru slow to 5 mph on the D Street Bridge when the driver spotted the police officer, then turn onto Second Street “driving in the middle of the road.”</p><p>Second Street, however, is an irregular street with no centerline and a high point that pushes vehicles toward one side or the other unless motorists cleave toward the center. </p><p>The report, Savano continued, said Irvin rolled through a stop at G Street, barely missing a parked car. In the report, Racconello described Irvin's appearance as “eyes bloodshot and watery,” according to Savano.</p><p>“At the time the officer arrested him, he was driving under the influence, clearly,” concluded Savano. </p><p>Although the California driver's manual indicates that a driver is under the influence when his blood alcohol is .08 percent or higher, the vehicle code gives an officer the leeway to arrest a driver if he or she thinks the driver is “under the influence of alcohol or drugs,” Savano said.</p><p>Savano admitted Irvin was driving well within the speed limit and close to home, but said, “We don't condone impaired driving” under any circumstances.</p><p>“What if someone is out there walking their dog and they get hit (by a driver who has been drinking)?” he asked. “At .05 percent I don't feel like I should be operating a car.”</p><p>(Contact Lois Pearlman at argus@arguscourier.com</p>