Olympia man's slurred speech leads to misadventure with police

By Jeremy Pawloski | The Olympian • Published May 11, 2008

OLYMPIA — An Olympia man who slurs his speech because of a traumatic brain injury he suffered in a 1999 fall says police wrongfully arrested him in March because they mistook his disability for intoxication.

Ryan Dinsmore, 33, was arrested and handcuffed on suspicion of driving under the influence while en route to the city jail to visit a friend who was being held there.

The results of a blood test taken at Providence St. Peter Hospital during the more than three hours in which Dinsmore was in custody show he was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The results of those tests were released April 18.

He will not be charged with a crime, Olympia police said.

Still, Dinsmore's mother, Linda, is angry.

"He showed them the scar on the back of his head," she said. "It's horrible — because you have a disability, that you're guilty of something."

She said that after her son suffered the injury, he was in an intensive-care unit in San Francisco for a month, then was at a rehabilitation hospital for three months. She said the disability has affected her son's rhythm and balance and the way his eyes track. She said that her son had to relearn to walk, and he read aloud from children's books to regain his speech.

Dinsmore blew 0.00 on Breathalyzer

Dinsmore said that when he stopped his car near City Hall about 6:15 p.m. March 15 to ask an officer, listed in the police report as B. Anderson, for directions to the jail, she asked how much he had been drinking and told him he seemed as though he was using drugs or under the influence of alcohol.

A second officer, drug-recognition expert Bryan Wyllie, arrived to assist.

Wyllie searched the vehicle and found nothing illegal. A police report says Dinsmore then was arrested and taken to the police station, where he registered a 0.00 on a Breathalyzer test, which detects blood-alcohol level.

Wyllie still "found probable cause to believe Dinsmore was under the influence of a CNS (central nervous system) depressant and unable to operate a motor vehicle safely," the report says.