Alcohol leads to more than a good time
Kadena Air Base, Japan -- "The plan was for us to go just to the Christmas party and home," said Staff Sgt. Joshua Roundtree, 18th Wing munitions inspector.
His wife had agreed to drive the night of the party so he could have a few drinks with his coworkers, he said. This was a favor to him as they had only been on island for a month and a half and she was still nervous about driving. After dinner and socializing, and only having consumed two drinks, a few friends asked if he'd like to go off base to continue drinking. The sergeant asked his wife and she agreed to drive. Before he'd finished his first drink at the bar, Sergeant Roundtree's wife told him she didn't feel comfortable driving and asked him to drive home. He agreed and ordered water from then on and waited a couple more hours before driving home.
"We get home, pull in the driveway, get out of the vehicle, I help my wife get out of the vehicle and we were walking over to the staircase to go up to our apartment," Sergeant Roundtree said. "When the [Okinawan] cops pull up in the driveway behind us, they turned on their lights and they said they were doing random breathalyzer checks."
He'd had three drinks within the span of the night, had a meal with the alcohol, then drank water as he put more time in between his drinking and driving, he added. There was no problem. Why wouldn't he blow under .03?
"The thing is, it was just a state of mind," he said. "We came from the states. After three drinks in the states, I blew under .08. In the states they'd tell you, 'No problem, go home.' Obviously we're not in the states, and it's .03. For anybody, that's a beer."
The couple spent the next few hours in an Okinawan police station filling out statements before 18th Security Forces moved them to a base facility.
"There I spent about two to three hours waiting for my first shirt to come pick us up," Sergeant Roundtree said. "[It's a] horrible, horrible feeling, being in jail and having your wife in jail with you. By now it's Christmas Eve, in the morning, [while] waiting for [my] first shirt to pick [us] up."
By the time their night was finally over, it was nearly 7 a.m. Christmas Eve morning, he said. They didn't say a word to each other the entire day.
"Christmas Day comes, we get up and the first words that my wife speaks to me are her asking me to return all her Christmas gifts," he said. "That was one of the worst things my wife could've ever said. You already feel like total crap, then to have your wife say that to you on Christmas, about Christmas presents, is ridiculous."
There were very few words spoken to each other that long weekend, the sergeant said.
"Tuesday rolls around and I was in the general's office with my supervisor, the shop chief, the first shirt and my commander in blues," he said. "It was a one-sided conversation, and I don't want to be on that side of the conversation ever again."
"Going back to work was horrible," he recalled. "You go back to work and you instantly know everybody is judging you. I don't care who it is, you are being judged."
Sergeant Roundtree then looked at his situation from a supervisor's perspective, he said. Being a non-commissioned officer, he is supposed to be the one who leads and sets the example. He made sure to have a one-on-one about it with his Airman, and discuss both sides of the story.
"The way I see it, I don't think my troop will ever get a DUI [Driving Under the Influence charge] and I'm pretty sure when he makes NCO, none of his troops will ever get a DUI," he said.
"Just because of the experience, the one-on-one, to know what I went through."
Sergeant Roundtree's outcome was a suspended license for six months, $4,000 in Okinawan fees, $225 to have his car towed and impounded, and he is waiting on the final cost to get his car out of impound.
"Not having a driver's license is unbelievably hard," said Sergeant Roundtree. "I'm 30 years old and I have to call somebody to come pick me up so we can go get groceries, [because] my wife's hungry, I don't have toilet paper, [or] I need a ride to the store."
Capt. Graham Bernstein, 18th Wing Legal office chief of international law, said the maximum penalty for a DUI under Japanese law (Road Traffic Law 65-1) is five years incarceration and a 1 million Yen fine.
However, Sergeant Roundtree and Captain Bernstein only discussed what can happen if a driver is pulled over. What if the driver isn't caught and stopped?
Mothers Against Drunk Driving gathered statistics about just that:
· An average drunk driver has driven drunk 87 times before first arrest.
· One in three young adults will be involved in an alcohol-related crash in their lifetime.
· Every minute, one person is injured from an alcohol-related crash.
· This year, 10,839 people will die in drunk-driving crashes -- one every 50 minutes.
"'I'm not going to get caught, I only have to drive this little distance,'" said Sergeant Roundtree.
"People think, 'I've got to drive a block or two.' I was in my driveway, not even in my vehicle and I still got a DUI. It can happen anywhere, it can happen anytime. It doesn't matter. When you least expect it is when it's going to happen."