Everyone Leaves Behind a Name by Michael Brick

Author:Michael Brick [Brick, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Sager Group
Published: 2016-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

dateline: Dallas, Texas

Finally, they all went to sleep.

After hours of screaming, picking fights, hogging mattress pads and making idle threats at guards, the more than 30 drunks, rowdies and bystanders in Male Dorm B of the Dallas Police Department’s detox center either passed out or took to staring at the wall.

Joining the crowd of regulars in the drunk tank Friday night was an assortment of Longhorn and Sooner fans, many of whom had driven hours for the experience.

And because they were charged with public intoxication, a misdemeanor based on whether the arresting officer believes the suspect is intoxicated, they went to jail in varying states of sobriety.

Police are not required to read Miranda rights to public intoxication suspects, or to test their blood-alcohol levels. For the Texas-OU weekend crackdown, police used strips of plastic as handcuffs, and loaded the drunken revelers into paddywagons.

Between 1 and 2 a.m., the football fans began to enter the detox center in full force. A group of five college students, one wearing a Texas T-shirt and the other four singing Oklahoma fight songs, were brought in around 2 a.m.

After being stripped of their belts, wallets, keys and other potential weapons, they were escorted from the approximately 8-by-10-foot holding tank—complete with a vomiting and urine hole—to the larger detox room to sober up.

The student with the UT shirt immediately headed for one of the hard blue pads to sleep, while the others set to picking fights.

Just about anything qualified as a reason to fight, including the obvious: “Shit, man, I bet you’re from Oklahoma.”

One Sooner fan complained loudly that he had fought in the Persian Gulf and therefore did not belong in jail.

“Sit your Desert Storm ass down. I was in Vietnam,” said an older man, stalking across the room toward the Sooner fan.

As the shoving began, a guard came into the room, grabbed two of the Sooner fans, and dragged them out. A UT Arlington student, displaying large welts from the plastic handcuffs, approached everyone who seemed at least mildly coherent to ask for their names and phone numbers.

“You can tell I’m not drunk, can’t you,” he said. “My dad’s a lawyer in Connecticut . . . I’m going to get out of this.”

Around 5 a.m., one man began a tirade against the guards that lasted more than an hour, demanding they turn off the air conditioning.

“Hey, ugly-ass ho,” he screamed. “Y’all got coats out there and you’re freezing me. Y’all better give us some jackets, ugly-ass ho. Hey, ugly-ass ho.”

After nearly half an hour, the guard opened the door, sprayed mace into the room and left again.

By 6 a.m., the relatively sober began to realize they could be bailed out, and began to demand telephone calls, pantomiming telephone conversations to the guards through a plexiglass window.

After friends—and in some cases parents—shelled out $110 bail to free the students, they hit the streets again, most with enough time for a nap before the football game.

— The Daily Texan, October 11, 1993

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