In the early morning hours of May 27, I closed a massive Phoenix area nightclub called Graham Central Station with my regular crew. It was a lady friend’s birthday, and were all in good spirits.

Unfortunately, being in good spirits is a dangerous state of mind these days in Arizona. The state’s ravenous DUI enforcement has now soared to most-repressive-laws-in-the-nation status. In turn, it’s become, like the old 1960’s protest song proclaimed, “a field day for the heat.”

A sexual field day to be precise.

A Draconian new state law recently passed that will force all first time offenders to equip their cars with those embarrassing and expensive breath detection monstrosities. The pricey devices passed the Arizona house and senate with unprecedented speed. Governor J-Nap, that ol’ Phoenix Mercury loving party girl, signed it with zeal.

The Arizona Republic newspaper, champions of government oppression, once again covered the news with unrestrained glee. The Mormon influenced rag, having never met a government oppression it didn’t like, treated the news as if there couldn’t remotely be any opposition to such statutory overkill. As always, they refused to present any side but the pounding of the legislature’s billy clubs on the bad, bad public’s skulls.

Which leads me back to Graham Central Station and our little birthday celebration. Knowing the cops were out for blood, I decided to lead my posse’ on foot to the Circle K across the street for an early morning hotdog feast. After lingering there, we hoofed it further east to a Tempe Wal-Mart where we killed additional time buying supplies for a scheduled pool party the next day.

In the strip mall parking lot west of the Wal-Mart, I noticed that a blue shark had found a tasty meal. A large, burly, African-American cop had chubby white woman bent over and handcuffed against the truck of her car. Her male friend, or boyfriend, remained in the vehicle, helpless to do anything. That’s the way DUI arrests go down. The cops immediately own the driver, and everyone else is kept away at gunpoint if need be.

From the Circle K, I had watched the young woman going through the humiliating DUI street dance, so there was no doubt that this was a DUI arrest. I also remember seeing the couple inside the club, and later in the parking lot. Neither seemed intoxicated.

The creepy thing about this particular arrest was that it was being done by a single officer with no partner, and no backup. As a former police beat journalist and a current true crime author, I know that it’s general procedure for officers arresting female traffic violators to have backup to ward off accusations of sexual harassment.

Obviously, such a potential accusation wasn’t a concern for this Officer Unfriendly. The balance of power was stacked in his favor, and he had other things in mind.

Realizing there was nothing I or anybody else could do, I shook my head in sympathy and went about my business.

After lingering in the big box store for about 30 minutes, my crew and I began the trek back to our vehicles – now sober enough to drive. After crossing Ray Road, something caught my eye. I turned and saw a speeding police unit with its lights off head north down a dark side street. It made an abrupt stop. Out popped a woman from the passenger door. The police car sped off in haste.

I looked closer. It was the same women I’d observed bent over against her vehicle. She appeared frazzled, dazed, and totally shamed.

When I explained to my friends what had happened – the officer traded sex, or a sex act, for a instant DUI amnesty -- some refused to believe it. They speculated the woman had been processed, and the officer had kindly given her a ride back to her vehicle, or her home.

Not in a million years. First off, no DUI is processed in 30 minutes. Secondly, cops don’t give anybody they arrest a ride back anywhere. You could be a crippled war veteran, and they’ll show you to the station house door and boot you out miles from the vehicle they ripped you out of. And third, her car was gone, and she didn’t live in the middle of a dark street in an industrial area.

Nope. This was a pure sex-for-freedom trade.

Is anybody really surprised? The current DUI laws give the police absolute power over everybody and anybody. Earlier this year, the esteemed CEO of U.S. Airways was taken down by a lowly street cop after the FBR Open golf tournament. Although he was traveling with attorney friends, Perry Mason couldn’t have saved the high flying executive from the lengthy arrest process, the needle, and the embarrassing national headlines. The poor SOB was barely over the recently reduced blood alcohol level limit after attending a popular golf tournament celebrated worldwide for its boisterous partying. What a shock. Yet, for all his influence, wealth, and power, he found himself “owned” in every derivation of that word by a friggin’ patrol officer.

More recently, a talented, home grown, African American NFL football player was snagged in a notorious speed trap in the redneck town of Gilbert. The yahoo cops, lurking in the shadows of a bizarre stretch of Gilbert Road that suddenly drops from 45 mph to a snail paced 25, busted the gridiron star for DUI on spec for good measure. The clever cops gambled that since it was 3:30 a.m., he must have been drinking, so they sucked his blood to see what numbers came up.

The results are pending. The player, Tank Johnson of the Chicago Bears, is already in hot water over some equally oppressive gun law violations in Illinois. The DUI hit could severely damage, if not end, his already short career.

What a rush that must be for the freshly empowered arresting officers. That’ll show them gangster rapping African Americans to stay out of Gilbert!

Is it any wonder that given this tremendous power, police officers are coercing victims into sex acts? Consider the spiked rubber hoses and blinding bare lights they now come armed with. Mandatory jail time. A massive auto insurance hit for five years. Hefty fines. Family and professional embarrassment. Topped off by the recently legislated Nazi breath gizmos screwed into one’s steering column, complete with a hefty monthly monitoring fee. That’s a whole heap of pressure they can pile on a woman’s head to force her to give it up in the caged back seat of a patrol car.

Not criminal women, or bad women, mind you, but average Josie’s out celebrating an engagement, a graduation, a promotion, a birth, a holiday, or a birthday. A woman like your wife, mother, sister, girlfriend, daughter, aunt, or even grandmother.

Or how about this. What if the officer is gay, and the victim is male? Run that scenario around your brain for a spin or two.

Nice going Arizona. Whoopee for being one of the toughest states in the union for DUI’s. Whoopee for giving a bunch of high school grads and GED’s wonders the absolute power to abuse woman absolutely.

Imagine the field day the cops will have early next year when the Super Bowl comes to town? How many more of the powerful and beautiful will be brought to their knees by sexual aggressors in black and white cars feverishly on the prowl during the already scheduled DUI Task Force? How many more of our nation’s best and brightest who came to town to stay in our hotels, eat at our restaurants, drink at our bars, and watch some football, all while dropping $400 million into our greedy pockets, will instead be arrested and blackmailed into giving some beat cop the sexual thrill of his life?

Funny how Arizona’s Super Bowl committee, already salivating for a future game beyond next year, failed to mention those state-of-the-art, nation leading DUI laws when they make their pitch to the NFL brass last month. Not so funny, or surprising, that the NFL said “no thanks” and chose another city far away to host their big party.

Currently, a few legislators have had second thoughts about slapping first time offenders with mandatory car breathalyzers, the law they overwhelmingly passed. A small movement has mounted to repeal it. Sexually abusive cops, however, need not worry. It’ll fail. The die has been cast.

In the last Star Wars installment, Queen Padme expressed it so chillingly when the space age Republic legislature happily agreed to switch from a democracy to a totalitarian empire ruled by a crazed Sith Lord.

“So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.”

Indeed it does, Arizona.

Dary Matera dary@darymatera.com