If you're old enough to drink and you aren't driving, it's legal to be publicly intoxicated in South Dakota.

It wasn't always. And retired Rapid City Police Chief Tom Hennies remembers those days well.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, downtown Rapid City was a rough place at night. Bars lined Main and St. Joseph streets, fights were frequent, and police officers patrolled on foot after dark.

"Sometimes, you had fights that you made arrests for, but often, it was public intoxication or disorderly conduct," said Hennies, who was then a patrol captain.

He estimates police arrested 10 to 20 people for public intoxication on a typical weekend night. They were taken to the city jail, located in the basement of what is now the Cornerstone Rescue Mission. A judge would typically order the offender to spend one day in jail, give him credit for time served, and turn him loose, Hennies said.

Not every drunken person was arrested. Those who headed home when police suggested they do so were generally just sent on their way if they weren't driving.

There were also sober homeless people arrested for public intoxication when the weather was bitterly cold.

"We went looking for them. We knew where they slept," Hennies said. "All the people that we did that to were thankful," because it meant they had a warm place to spend the night and a decent meal.

"We saved a lot of lives that way," Hennies said. "But there were people out there who thought we should not be arresting people for public intoxication because it's an illness."

In fact, the entire nation's view of alcoholism was changing at that time. In 1970, Congress passed the Comprehensive Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation Act, which recognized alcoholism as a disease requiring treatment and protected alcoholics from job discrimination.

The act also called for finding ways to divert problem drinkers from the criminal justice system into prevention and treatment programs. Partially as a result of that, the number of alcohol treatment, counseling and education programs increased in the 1970s.

In 1974, the South Dakota Legislature passed a law stating that intoxication is not in itself an element of criminal offense. Hennies said Rae Neal, who was Rapid City's police chief in the early 1970s, was one of many who supported the change.

State law 34-20A-93 also prohibits any government subdivision from adopting or enforcing laws that penalize people for drinking, drunkenness or being found in an intoxicated condition.

But you can't do whatever you want when you're drunk. Driving while intoxicated (or under the influence of a controlled substance) is illegal, of course. And in Rapid City, so is soliciting.

Asking a person for money while drunk is punishable by 30 days in jail and a $200 fine, said Assistant City Attorney Mike Schad. Police can also cite intoxicated people for other actions, such as "aggressive solicitation," disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace.

There is also a provision in state law that allows police to take into protective custody any intoxicated person in a public place who is "clearly dangerous to the health and safety of

himself or others."

State law 34-20A-55, first passed in 1974, directs that such a person be taken to a detoxification facility for emergency commitment or held for up to 48 hours in jail until he or she is no longer intoxicated or incapacitated.

At one time, police sent drunken people to a "flop house" to spend the night and sober up.

"We hired a guy from the School of Mines, who sat there all night and did his schoolwork," Hennies said. "From that, we developed the detox program, and now, … if you're picked up for public intoxication where you're a danger to yourself or others, you can be held longer than we held them before. You can be held three days without a hearing."

As former police chief, Hennies appreciates the challenges the current police administration faces downtown, where business owners have complained about drunken people damaging their property and hurting their business.

"The fact is that sometimes those people are in real danger, and they need to be taken care of. And I'm sorry that there are intoxicated people that are bothering people downtown," Hennies said. "By the same token, people gotta realize that these are human beings down there with a problem. And they need to be treated like human beings."

Having more officers stationed downtown could minimize problems for businesses. But as Hennies points out, that takes officers away from working more serious crimes.

"If (a guy's) panhandling, how serious is that?" Hennies asked. "Do you want to have a cop down there spending his time making sure nobody's asking you for a quarter?"

Contact Heidi Bell Gease at 394-8419 or heidi.bell@rapidcityjournal.com

Title: Public intoxication Date: May 18th, 2009 The Rapid City Journal takes a closer look at the issue of public intoxication - what causes it, how does it affect the community and what can be done? VIEW PRESENTATION »