An especially easy DWI arrest in New Hope

Last update: April 18, 2008 - 12:37 AM

The cops told an admittedly drunken Maceo Julius Phillips that he was free to go. But they didn't mean that he could drive away with his baby daughter in the back seat of his car.

Now the 27-year-old Minneapolis man is in the Hennepin County jail, charged with drunken driving for the fourth time in less than three years after what probably was one of the New Hope Police Department's easier arrests.

"It's pretty cut and dried," said detective Marty Williams, who filed the complaint that charged Phillips this week with felony drunken driving.

Officers first encountered Phillips when called at 10:30 p.m. Tuesday to the parking lot of an apartment complex at 5605 Quebec Av. N. on a report of two men arguing. They spoke briefly with Phillips, who was having trouble keeping his balance and who admitted to officers that he had been drinking. When officers told him that he could leave, Phillips "just stood there with a confused look on his face" before pausing to look back at a vehicle in the parking lot, the complaint said. He then went inside the apartment building.

His glance toward a car led police to believe he was going to drive, so they waited at opposite ends of the parking lot. Indeed, he soon returned to the car and pulled out. He was pulled over and arrested. Officers then found his 6-month-old daughter in the back seat.

Phillips, whose blood-alcohol count was 0.19 percent, was charged with first-degree drunken driving while impaired, the same felony that led to three previous drunken-driving convictions.

ABBY SIMONS

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