COOKEVILLE — Too drunk to go to jail? That’s what Putnam County jailers told a Cookeville Police officer about a man the officer had arrested for being drunk in public.
So Officer Kenneth Frye ended up having to first take Richard Brian Lloyd, 54, of Ben Loftis Road, Cookeville, to the hospital for treatment of his drunkenness before he could be booked into jail.
It happened Monday night after Officer Frye was dispatched to Gearheads tavern on E. Spring St. to investigate a reported disturbance inside the bar. A bar worker had called a cab for Richard Brian Lloyd, but when they put him into the taxi, he passed out and “could not tell the cab driver where to take him,” Officer Frye’s report says.
“When I arrived, I observed a male laying on the ground in front of Gearheads,” the officer wrote in the report. “The male smelled strongly of an odor commonly associated with alcohol, had slurred speech, and was very unsteady on his feet. I identified the male as Richard Lloyd.”
Officer Frye handcuffed Lloyd and placed him into the patrol car and headed for the Putnam County jail. But when he arrived there, corrections officers “said that they would not accept Lloyd because he was ‘too drunk,’” the report says.
Full story: Man so drunk the jail would not take him in