What does a drunken sailor look like? With boating season bearing down on us fast, police in New York’s Suffolk County are mixing cocktails for paid volunteers in order to learn just that. “We really need the real live intoxicated people so we can do the standardized field sobriety testing in a real life atmosphere,” explains Officer Charles Boyle. And they got ’em: “Oh my God, I am so drunk it’s not even funny,” says one volunteer (below). After an in-the-line-of-duty cocktail hour, officers attempt to gauge physiological signs of drunkenness and guess the volunteers’ BAC, before seeing how their estimates match up against breathalyzer results. Suffolk County’s finest saw too many drunk boaters take to the waters last year and are determined to crack down on the dangerous practice. Their self-sacrificing volunteers were driven home afterwards to sleep it off.
