Video: Iowa Trooper Won't Cooperate During DWI Arrest

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — An off-duty Iowa State Patrol trooper tried to get out of a drunken-driving arrest by repeatedly refusing to cooperate and then berating the arresting officer for making the "community weaker," according to police recordings released Monday.

Audio and video from the arresting officer's body camera and patrol car show Patrick Steinbach acting belligerently during the Dec. 20 arrest outside a woman's home in Williamsburg, 25 miles west of Iowa City. The arrest prompted his resignation from the patrol and the removal of a booking officer who gave him special treatment at the Iowa County jail.

The recordings, released to The Associated Press under Iowa's open records law, show that the former Iowa State football player repeatedly refused to say whether he would take a breath test. He insisted it was "absurd" to suggest he would ever drive drunk, telling the arresting officer, "I love you guys like brothers."

The officer, Jason Mochal, later called in the Williamsburg police chief to help and told Steinbach he was "playing games" to get the case thrown out.

When Steinbach finally submitted to a test, his blood alcohol content was twice the legal limit for driving, the video shows. He told officers that his cousin was a great defense lawyer who would help him beat the case. Riding to the jail, he expressed shock he was being arrested and unleashed an expletive-filled outburst.

"Good for you, man. You make our (expletive) community weaker," he told Mochal.

At the jail, Steinbach appeared confused on drunken driving law — despite being well-versed in traffic laws as a Cedar Rapids-based trooper — and asked repeatedly to have an advisory on Iowa's implied-consent law read to him.

His behavior was described as interference by Mochal, but Steinbach wasn't put in handcuffs, did not have his booking photo taken and wasn't placed in a jail cell for hours.

"Don't treat me like a criminal," Steinbach told booking officer Doug Krutsinger, who agreed and shook his hand. "I'm not a bad guy."

Iowa County Sheriff Rob Rotter has said Krutsinger violated numerous policies during the booking process by treating Steinbach as a friend, not an inmate. The sheriff said Krutsinger's employment ended after the case, but he declined to say whether Krutsinger was fired or resigned. Krutsinger hasn't returned messages seeking comment from the AP.

Steinbach, 28, pleaded guilty to operating a vehicle while intoxicated last week. He was fined $1,250 and sentenced to either two days in jail or an OWI program.

"Pat was intoxicated, he was not thinking clearly and was trying to find a way to escape the situation," his attorney, Dan Rothman, said Monday. He said Steinbach accepted responsibility by pleading guilty and declining to challenge the legality of the arrest.

The case started when a 36-year-old single mother of two called 911 to report that an unknown man was outside pounding on her door and refusing to leave. The woman and her mother told police they were frightened and trying to put the kids to bed. Rothman said Steinbach was an acquaintance of the woman, whose soldier husband was killed in Afghanistan in 2005, and wanted to stop by to wish her well, but "wasn't aware what time it was and didn't have his bearings."

Mochal arrived to find Steinbach — who lived a mile away — in his truck backing out of the woman's driveway. Steinbach smelled of alcohol, had open containers in his vehicle and refused to answer questions about what he was doing. Mochal told Steinbach that he wanted to help him "as much as I can," but that Steinbach wasn't cooperating.

Mochal called his boss, Williamsburg Police Chief Ray Garringer, for guidance, saying he was stuck "between a rock and a hard place," the recordings show. Garringer told Mochal to perform field sobriety tests and later came to the scene, telling Steinbach that "we wouldn't have given anybody else this many chances" to say whether they would take a breath test.

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