The public intoxication charge filed in June against attorney Mindy Montford has been dropped, according to her lawyer, Pat McNelis. Montford was slapped with the PI charge after a car she was riding in last month was pulled over near Sixth Street. Police Corporal Darryl Fulbright arrested Montford after she tried to give her friend, the driver of the car, legal advice – specifically, that he didn’t have to take any field sobriety tests. Fulbright ordered Montford to get back into the car, which she did; however, Fulbright later returned to the car to arrest Montford and another passenger – it seems Montford simply didn’t pass the attitude test.
But now it’s Fulbright’s attitude that is at issue: On Monday, Montford, a former assistant district attorney who ran for Travis Co. D.A. in last year’s Democratic primary, filed an official complaint about Fulbright with the Office of the Police Monitor, in which, according to McNelis, Montford asserts that her arrest was “made out of retaliation,” “that there was no evidence” that Montford was intoxicated, and that Fulbright made “no attempt to do any investigation,” which would have shown that neither Montford nor her fellow passenger were inebriated. (It seems that Fulbright might have a fuse a tad short for work in the Sixth Street entertainment district: As he drove Montford to jail, Fulbright’s in-car dash camera picked up audio of him opining that the street should be “shut down” and that all liquor should be outlawed.) The entire incident, McNelis concluded, was “ridiculous.”
This article appears in July 17 • 2009.