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Undersheriff’s drunk driving charges dropped

September 20, 2010

A judge dismissed drunken driving charges against San Luis Obispo County Undersheriff Steve Bolts on Monday because a retest of his blood showed Bolts has a blood alcohol level of 0.07 percent, which is under the legal limit. [KSBY]

Atascadero Police arrested Bolts on June 5, after someone reported that he had left a child’s sports event intoxicated. Initial blood test showed Bolts had a blood alcohol level of 0.09 percent.

The legal limit in California is 0.08 percent.

To avoid a conflict of interest, the California Attorney General’s office handled the case. The blood sample was retested by a lab in San Francisco and came back under the legal limit.

San Luis Obispo County Superior Court Judge Barry LaBarbera dismissed the DUI charge against Bolts on Monday. Nevertheless, Bolts pleaded no contest to a charge of reckless driving and was given a $500 fine and three years of probation.

Bolts stepped down from his part-time undersheriff position last week.


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Bent Coppers. Dirty, crooked, thick Barneys. Nothing new here. Same old song and dance that’s been playing since forever.


Getting caught with their hands in the evidence bin, child molesting, downloading kiddie porn, wife beating, evidence tampering, lying in their reports, and let’s not forget the ubiquitous, all pervasive “professional courtesy”. Any cop who has ever shown his badge upon getting pulled over for a traffic stop is bent. Any who have given their “business card” to their wives and kids for them to use as a free pass is crooked. Any who defend the practice are corrupt. They believe themselves to be above the law because in fact they are. And they wonder why they are held in such low esteem by law abiding, tax paying citizens.


Gone are the days when the police concentrated on keeping the peace and arresting people who posed a danger to the community, you the law abiding tax payer. Now they are little more then heavily armed, overly paid tax collectors who have no interest in deterring or solving criminal activity unless it involves net revenue for the treasury.


Protecting themselves and their own from the likes of “civilians” is the predominant concern, always and above all other matters. Idle, bloated, badge heavy, bunker mentality Barneys who at the slightest whiff of being exposed as bent take early retirement on “medical grounds”.


Same as it ever was.


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Real nice there Booty JuJu. You’re painting with a pretty broad brush. Where’s the moderator on this one?


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Booty’s comment is a troll, best not engage him (don’t feed trolls) I know for a fact the mod prefers email about this kind of thing..


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Definately not cool there Booty JuJu. You’re painting with a pretty broad brush and some of it is pretty offensive. Where’s the moderator on this?


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I agree with you 100%. A couple of years ago a local attorney who specializes in DUI told me that updated labs always return a BAC screen at least a point lower than what our local lab measures. Anyone that is ever close like .09% should always have their blood retested out of town. Now it appears that If you are .10% or lower you probably were not DUI. As for Steve Bolts, I know that .07% is not a high enough BAC to cause him to be driving in the middle of the road. . .07% is very low and two glasses of wine or 8oz over a period of an hour would put me at .07% or higher. I can assure you that 8oz of wine does not effect my driving although I wouldn’t do it only because if there was ever an accident they would hang whoever had alcohol in their system (legal BAC or not), regardless of who caused it.

Steve got stuck pleading to the reckless driving because the arresting officer wrote up a report that indicated that he was all over the road. It doesn’t sound like the reckless driving was a wet reckless. DUI stays on a record for 10 years and is far more serious than just a straight reckless driving.


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Too bad he’s not the under-sherif anymore, I would dearly love to hear him defend the breathalyzer policies of that department now.

On the other hand, maybe he had just eaten a sandwich:

http://www.duiblog.com/2005/03/08/driving-under-the-influence-of-bread/


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Of course they were dropped. No law enforcement officers or politicians ever get convicted around here, ever.


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Wow – I am SO surprised by this !!


I was also shocked to see the sun come up this morning.


Will this person continue to carry a gun for a living and attempt to enforce laws for which he has no respect? The DA should have recused himself without question. Talk about a hometown advantage.


Mr Bolts should be suspended from his duties without pay. His actions are a disgrace to his badge and an affront to people living in SLO County.


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Innocent people don’t plead guilty to reckless driving just for fun. This whole thing stinks and LaBarbara should have declared a conflict since he and Bolts prosecuted cases togother in the past. The .08 limit is an automatic presumption. You can still be convicted of driving under the influence at an .07 based on driving patterns. Boltz driving on the wrong side of the road rounding a corner was a good indiction that he was impaired and in violation of the law. Very sad day for MADD and others who have lost loved ones at the hands of drunk drivers when the system is perverted in such a manner.


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.05 is the legal threshold for driving under the influence. .08 is drunk driving. He plead to what is commonly called a “wet reckless”. Very common.


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This sounds more like a plea bargain agreement. If the test showed that he didn’t meet the BA requirements for drunk driving why in the world would he plead guilty to reckless driving?

Reckless driving and drunk driving both have the same identical impact on your driving record-a 2 point offense.


Sounds like a Monty Hall verdict to me-Let’s make a deal.

Kelly Gearhart where are you?


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