Is the LPD Drunk with Power?

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Our readers familiar with classic TV programs may remember a character on the Andy Griffith Show named Otis Campbell, who winds down from his factory job during the week with more than a few drinks over the weekend and who winds up in the jail of Mayberry.  On the show, it would not be uncommon for Otis to use the jail for a place to sober up after a night of drinking, a key was left accessible to him so that he could let himself in without bothering the sheriff or his deputies.    

Ludington in 2025 is not Mayberry in 1965, so one may expect that our police might handle those who drink in excess differently.  And if you staggered through reading Ludington Police Department's (LPD's) recent activity report, you might believe that being drunk in public was a crime:

LUDINGTON — Ludington police officers cited one man and arrested another who were so intoxicated they couldn’t care for themselves, according to Ludington Police Chief Christopher Jones.

The first incident occurred Saturday, April 12, shortly after 5:30 p.m. in Copeyon Park.

A 42-year-old Ludington man “was found to be intoxicated and unable to care for himself,” said the chief. “The subject was issued a citation for public intoxication, (and) then transported to Corewell Health ER for a medical evaluation without incident.”

The second incident occurred Sunday, April 13, around 11:30 a.m. in the 900 block of North Lavinia Street where police were responding to check on the welfare of an individual. 

A 59-year-old Ludington man was “was found to be highly intoxicated and unable to care for himself,” said Chief Jones. “Due to the subject’s level of intoxication, the subject was transported to Corewell Health ER for a medical evaluation (and) then lodged in the Mason County Jail without incident.”

Ironically, the same day this article came out, the Ludington City Council would ask Jones whether expanding the social district in the downtown would create more law enforcement issues than taking the districts away.  Jones would reply that he wasn't aware of any incidents that police responded to that could be traced back to having the social districts in place, so the council expanded places that could sell alcohol to people to be drank outside of the establishment in the public eye.  And while the council introduced legislation that would make smoking illegal in most places at city parks, they would be disclosing that their concession contractor down at the beach was just a few steps away from being able to sell alcohol products down at the beach to be drank in that public place. 

 

City leaders, including the police chief, definitely have a love affair with alcoholic drinks and their consumption in public places, as seen by the above and their embrace of several events in their downtown that deal primarily with selling stiff drinks to the public:  Octoberfest, Brrrewfest, the NYE Ball Drop, etc.  The powerful movers and shakers behind the scenes, including ones at the bottling company with a Budweiser clydesdale statue in its front yard and ones running local breweries are directly and indirectly sponsoring public drunkenness in Ludington as their business model.

And yet, the LPD arrests/cites two people for public intoxication when officers establish that they "couldn't care for themselves".  When one reviews state laws on public intoxication, one is hard-pressed to find anything that makes it criminal, a prominent Lansing law firm affirms this:

Unless modified by a stricter local law, police in Michigan cannot arrest you for being drunk in public, only take you into 'protective custody for 8 hours, much like what was happening in Mayberry.  Does Ludington have a stricter law in its city code?  It does, and it's a lot more ambiguous than a law should be, especially for a tourist town that espouses and glamorizes drinking in public.

 

This law seems to be giving an LPD officer a lot of discretion in determining whether a crime is being committed by someone who maybe has had one too many drinks than is prudent.  One could say that anybody who drinks in excess is directly endangering his own safety even if they are not causing anybody else any problems.  And this appears to be the case in both of these incidents, as I found out after receiving the over-redacted police reports for both of them.  

In the Saturday afternoon incident, anybody who has ever rode their bicycle or scooter down the entry road to Copeyon Park can verify that it's hard to keep control while going down the very steep hill, I have seen a bicyclist and skateboarder lose control and hit the ground like this guy, Joseph Harter, did with his scooter.  LPD Officer Austin Morris doesn't seem to take that into account on his report, but he does notice that Harter has signs of inebriation.  

The redacted report covers up what his blood alcohol content from the PBT was and some other material from the narrative that appears to be about his condition or medical issues due to the crash.  The exemptions noted on the FOIA response do not seem to cover these conditions/issues, nor describe how they apply to the redactions claimed.  The City's FOIA Coordinator, Ross "Sewage" Hammersley, is continuing to break the law in order to block the public from getting public records.

By covering up the blood alcohol data from the non-binding PBT and not indicating that Harter was legally intoxicated by any other metric other than through the PBT, Harter should have success against the citation if he challenges it.  Harter is guilty of nothing in state law, and it's hard to see why Officer Morris would assign a misdemeanor of public intoxication to someone who attempted to go down that steep slope on a scooter and failed to do so, as many sober people would do.  

Harter had been operating a 'vehicle' under Michigan law, presuming the scooter had a motor, and could have been arraigned for DWI had he been above the established legal limit for being intoxicated while operating a motor vehicle.  Arresting him for a city code violation which depends on the state establishing that he was intoxicated in public seems a stretch when the city never establishes what blood alcohol level defines intoxication, nor do they make note of the PBT reading in the citation, unless they illegally edited that out too in the remarks.  

The Sunday incident is more disturbing in several ways.  In Jones' press release, he indicates that the incident happened in the 900 block of North Lavinia, and we can presume this happened on the east side of that block, at Glenview Apartments, by the references left unredacted in the report.  But the report covers up the location, even the street that was revealed in the news release:

Public bodies have the power to redact out FOIA exempt material, but they have no power to redact information that has already been publicly revealed by their police chief.  This is the first violation of FOIA, but definitely not the last as they redact a lot of information that should have been left in, as none of the FOIA exemptions claimed would seem to apply, nor would others.  

Those FOIA violations aside, what is left of the narrative of this incident explains why this arrest is troubling.  The man, whose address can be looked up and identified as being at Glenview was not operating any vehicles, just apparently drunk and lying in Glenview's grass near the dumpster when he was approached by former Scottville chief of police, Matt Murphy and fellow LPD Officer Austin Morris:

Boynton's location in the report is given by Morris' supplement which states he was found in the grass near the dumpster and that he used the dumpster fence for support, the only dumpster visible from the street is the one below, which is well beyond the public right of way.

In the city code's public intoxication section, a 'public place' is not well-defined, but it seems that since Boynton apparently lives at Glenview and pays for the privilege (from a people-finder website), that the area he was at was not a 'public place', it was part of the territory of his private home. 

Once again, the PBT reading is covered up illegally and so the public cannot determine what the LPD considers 'intoxicated', nor how it shows that Boynton is indeed intoxicated.  Why did they insist that Boynton take a breathalyzer when Michigan law and precedent says that pedestrians should not be administered such 'searches' without a warrant?  

Boynton was not engaging in any kind of 'disorderly conduct' and should never have been arrested.  Caring officers would have suggested getting him into a treatment program, and led him back to his apartment where his wife (whose names and comments are totally covered up in the report) could look over him and keep him out of the public's eye. 

Instead, he was immediately jailed under an ill-defined statute that amounted to a misdemeanor crime and will tax our already overburdened justice system with a charge that doesn't seem to apply and is definitely not designed to help him overcome any drinking problem he may have.  Secondarily, since the City of Ludington and their FOIA coordinator desires to cover up relevant information that should never be exempted out of police records, they only highlight that they are not interested in defending their arrest-happy officers making criminals out of thin air when doing a well-being check or arriving as first responders to a scooter accident.  They then make a condescending public press release stating that the two cited/arrested were incapable of taking care of themselves, when there is nothing in the record that indicates that.

Why aren't Officers Morris and Murphy out making public intoxication arrests during all these city-sanctioned bacchanals and what's going to stop their beach patrol from carrying breathalyzers and harassing tourists for public intoxication when they've made multiple trips to the beach bartenders for alcoholic beverages?  How twisted our city is when they do so much to advocate for alcohol consumption and social districts while they have perhaps the most repressive and arbitrary city code section in the state that can make a responsible social drinker a criminal on the whims of one of their poorly trained and poorly supervised police officers.