Pat Foster, an avid mariner who buys and repairs vessels as a hobby, plops a bulky bag onto the boat at Lake Austin Marina on Memorial Day Sunday. The bag is stuffed with all the usual supplies for a day out on the water—flippers, scuba goggles, snorkel. But it’s the black baton strapped to the side and a metal citation clipboard sticking out from the top that seem out of place.
Then there are the really cool, Air Force–style life jackets, with two strips that run down the chest like big suspenders, complete with Austin Police Department (APD) insignia. They inflate automatically when you hit the water or pull the cord. Putting it on over my tank top, I feel like a skinnier Bane, the villain from The Dark Knight Rises. All this adds up to one thing: This will be a different kind of police ridealong.
Everyone is laughing and smiling. Nearly everyone is drinking. And there’s nothing wrong, nor illegal, about that—unless you’re driving a boat.
Memorial Day weekend is when summer semi-officially begins for most of the country’s parks, lakes, and rivers. That’s certainly the case for the Austin area, home to Lady Bird Lake, Lake Austin, the Colorado River, and Lake Travis. For the public, it’s often the start of booze-fueled trips to the water that will peak in July and carry on into August. (Indeed, one local boat rental company is named “Aquaholics.”) But the start of summer also means the start of the boating while intoxicated (BWI) season for law enforcement.
According to the US Coast Guard, there are about 12 million registered recreational water vessels in the country—and the leading factor in all boat-related deaths is alcohol, although it only “leads” at 16%. As for accidents, injuries and deaths on the water with alcohol as a contributing factor, the national numbers have stayed relatively consistent. The median is about 153 deaths a year. Injuries: 388. Last year, Texas had 21 reported alcohol-related accidents, six deaths and 16 injuries.
APD’s aqua squad has four operational boats. On our three-hour tour, we’re joined by Foster’s partner, John O’Donnell, a four-year veteran of the Lake Patrol unit, and Pat Orborski, an officer from the city’s specialty DWI Enforcement Unit.
The weather on Friday and Saturday was crap, so “they’re making up for it today,” says Foster, as we cruise down the lake. The waterway itself is fairly open. Both Foster and O’Donnell seem much more relaxed and friendly than the standard-issue police officer one might meet on the street. Boats bounce by, with someone in them usually giving a casual, howdy-officer wave as we pass. The sides of the lake are riddled with massive shorefront houses, and there’s even a gated-community island. Foster points to the mini-mansion owned by tennis superstar Andy Roddick. Another looks like a small-scale version of the Great Gatsby’s house, painted a horrendous shade of pink.
Then we pull into Bee Cave, one of Lake Austin’s two coves.
“As you can see, this is party central,” says Foster. “They had like a five-beer-bong thing that they would fill up and hang from the wakeboard tower last year.”
The watery cul de sac is packed with boats—mostly rows of mid-sizers with space in between, like a parking lot with partiers in every direction. Music—lots of rap—blasts from nearly every other vessel. “Last year, ‘Pop That Pussy’ was the popular track,” says Foster. “It’s still too early to know what what the hits will be this year.”
Everyone is laughing and smiling. Nearly everyone is drinking. And there’s nothing wrong, nor illegal, about that—unless you’re driving a boat. In Texas, charges and penalties for a BWI (.08 BAC and above) are the same as a DWI: suspension of (automobile) driver’s license, fines and possible jail time.
As with DWI laws, every state does things a little differently. And BWIs are usually not the biggest concern for law enforcement. But as Chris Moore, training director at the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators (NASBLA) notes, states have begun to crack down. “It’s slow progress but there is progress being made,” he says. “A lot of times, it kind of takes a horrific accident to get things moving in an individual state… and we see that happening a lot. But there aren’t any states moving to lessen penalties.”
Moore cites Georgia, which revised its BWI penalties after two deaths last year. According to the Newnan Times-Herald, Georgia had been one of just eight states to have a have a higher BAC limit (.10) for boat captains than car drivers (the standard .08). Other states that have recently enacted increased BWI penalties include New York and North Carolina.
Still, even if a boater is over the limit, how does a squad like APD’s Lake Patrol unit find them? It’s not like you can tell a person is swerving, since there are no painted lanes to cross over.
“There’s not a whole lot of enforcement out here,” says Foster. “A lot of it is just safety.” Safety, in this case, means basic guidelines from the Texas Water Safety Act, which follows standards set by the Coast Guard. Foster says they make a lot of arrests after sundown, when people clearly don’t have all the required lighting.
Other than that, though—and unlike officers patrolling streets and highways, who (with the exception of checkpoints) need probable cause to pull someone over—“We don’t have to have a reason to stop anybody,” says Foster. Given that the Lake Patrol unit’s mission is to ensure that the Water Safety Act is being followed, they can stop anyone to make sure that’s the case.
“OK, get ready to take notes right here,” says O’Donnell with a smile, as we ease into Lake Austin’s other party cove, Bull Creek. On one boat, we see two women go tandem on a double-spouted beer bong. Another boat has a stripper pole.
“We’re gonna stop that knucklehead there,” says Foster, pointing to a little, brown Ski Nautique power boat loaded with six young things that had pulled in just ahead of us. “Wake in a no-wake zone,” he adds, helpfully. It’s one of the simple guidelines that often get drinking boaters in trouble. O’Donnell asks me if I saw it, but as a born-and-bred landlubber, I can’t tell the difference between a wake and a funeral.
Foster gets on the bullhorn, but it’s difficult to hear amongst all the noise. Foster wants the Nautique to stop so that we don’t have to follow it all the way around the party’s perimeter. “We’ll get ’em,” says O’Donnell, amused. “Chasing’s the fun part.”
It’s an odd chase, though: four miles per hour, tops. And the suspect isn’t even aware he’s being chased.
The Nautique settles in at the end of one of the rows. The police are surrounded—outnumbered by boats, people, scantily clad girls waving hello. General chaos. Yet the officers don’t look stiff or tense. They seem almost chill as they ask the boaters to show proof of all the necessary Water Safety Act guidelines.
The officers inform the kid that they’re taking him ashore for more tests. As our boat skips over the waves, the kid in the front looks relaxed, if a bit crestfallen.
“It’s different because it’s not like you can park your car and come up there,” says Foster later. “We have to come up the side, and you’ve got the driver that you’re dealing with. Whereas we’ve got, what … six people? And we’re just surrounded. It’s just a whole different policing style.”
Saddled beside the tiny boat, which emits the same whiff of alcohol as a carful of boozers, Officer Foster tells everyone to “hold up a life jacket, appropriate size.” The checklist continues: Boat title? Fire extinguisher? What about the horn? Check, check, and check. Now it’s time to talk to the driver. He hops onto the police boat and sits at the bow, where O’Donnell joins him, looking like they’re just having a friendly chat.
After a few minutes, O’Donnell switches places with the DWI officer, saying, “He seems like he’s slurring a bit.” The DWI officer talks to the guy, who’s in nothing but swim trunks, and then performs just about the only Standardized Field Sobriety Test (SFST) one can in this situation, the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (HGN), or the eye test. The kid doesn’t do himself any favors by admitting to having had a couple. Then, when the DWI officer pulls out a portable breathalyzer, the Nautique’s captain refuses in a confused and incriminating way.
“But you said it only tests for alcohol,” he says. Whoops. Foster later tells me they don’t see lot of weed-smoking partiers, which he and I both agree is a bit surprising. Foster suspects it has something to do with the way lake winds carry odors.
NASBLA’s Moore said the organization just completed a three-year validation process of a seated SFST program and is beginning to pitch the new boat-friendly SFST to law enforcement organizations around the country. While the group’s claim that the seated SFST is 91% accurate is provenly dubious, the new tests—which include HGN, finger-to-nose, and a palm-pat exercise—could help water-bound officers better identify drinkers without first having to take them to dry land. Which is exactly what happens to the brown Nautique’s captain.
With enough probable cause, the officers inform the kid that they’re taking him ashore for more tests. Before leaving, they have the young crew decide who is legally able to drive. Not that they have to know how to drive a boat; Foster says the “driver” just has to be sober. We head to the nearest loading dock, about a five-minute jaunt. As our boat skips over the waves, the kid in the front looks relaxed, if a bit crestfallen.
“If they’re acting up, we’ll put ’em in cuffs, but number one, he’s not under arrest right now; he’s being detained,” says Foster. “So we don’t want to handcuff him to give him the impression he’s under arrest. And number two, unless they’re really just acting up, in case they were to fall out of the boat….” He doesn’t have to finish the sentence.
At the loading ramp, the DWI officer goes off with the detainee while the rest of us remove our life jackets. The kid sits on a bench while the officers keep an eye on him. Again, it seems more casual than your average police stop. But without shoes, it’s not like he’s going to run anywhere—and there are few places on his swim-trunk-clad person where he could hide a weapon. We wait around for about 15 minutes, in order to give the suspect time to get his land legs back under him.
“Really, they’ve proven that you don’t need [the extra time],” says Foster. “But it’s just one of those standards. So we do it.”
After a quarter hour, the boat cops escort the detainee to an area in the loading dock’s parking lot, and perform the field sobriety tests as I watch from a distance. Unfortunately for the Nautique captain, the tests don’t come back in his favor, and they cuff him and put him in the patrol car.
The DWI officer has to return to the marina. The DWI is his case, so he’ll have to drive a few miles back to central booking. Meanwhile, the APD Lake Patrol unit will issue a citation for the kid’s careless waking, officially “Violation of Navigational Control Zone.” The boat cops end up making four BWI arrests total, “our record for one night,” Foster tells me later.
As we put our life preservers back on, I accidently pull my own cord. The straps blow up, nearly choking me, before it pops, leaving an uncomfortable ringing in my ear. And on that embarrassing note, I decide to take my shore leave with the DWI officer.
Jeff Winkler has written for VICE magazine, The Awl and The New Republic, among other publications.
