DALLAS _ Happy hour isn't even over yet, and she's already landed one.
"Starting off with a bang," Officer Stacie Brown says as she walks behind the Arlington police station. It's dusk on a cold Wednesday, and the sky is streaked with pink.
Brown is a cop who arrests drunken drivers, and the holiday season is her busiest time of year. This time, Brown didn't have to scour the highways looking for an intoxicated driver. One came to her.
Well, other cops brought him to her. They said he'd led them on a high-speed chase through a neighborhood before he crashed and fought the officers. His three kids were in the car; one had a huge knot on his head.
"Hi," Brown says as she approaches the slumped, handcuffed man in the backseat of the squad car. He's young and tattooed all over his arms and neck. He answers her questions in quiet gasps, heaving and shaking.
What were you doing when you got pulled over?
Going to buy meth.
Why did you run?
Panicked.
"I appreciate you being honest," Brown says.
She talks to the man with respect, no condescension. It's not just a tactic to gain cooperation _ though it does work. Brown genuinely does not judge the people she arrests.
She knows many of them are good people who just made a bad decision. She knows this all too well.
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