Attempts To Avoid Publicity Garner Publicity For This Drunken Driving Suspect

The mugshot that Joseph Talbot
of upstate New York did not
want you to see. 

Drunk driving is wrong, and also, less importantly, embarrassing.

If you're caught driving while intoxicated, chances are your local paper will pick up on this story and publish it. Especially if you live in a small town and/or you're fairly prominent.

Guess what? It gets even worse if you try to hide the news.

According to The Times of Wayne County, one guy learned this truism the hard way.

Police say a guy named Joseph Talbot, 43, of Newark in Wayne County, New York, was arrested recently because authorities said they saw him driving erratically on Route 31 in Palmyra, New York.

He failed several field sobriety tests, and was brought to a police station, where he refused to give a breath sample, let troopers take fingerprints or take a mug shot. (They ended up taking a mug shot anyway.)

Police said Talbot told them he was angry that the mug shot would end up in "that rag" (The Times of Wayne County) and that police were trying to ruin his family.  Police probably wouldn't have tried to "ruin" his family if this guy stayed sober while driving.

Talbot's lack of cooperation  prompted police to add a charge of obstructing governmental administration, in addition to the DUI charge, says The TImes of Wayne County.

The trooper had tried to explain to Talbot that his refusals would create an even bigger story in the newspaper.

It turns out the troopers were right. The big headline in the Times of Wayne County was "Bank VP/Palmyra Man Calls Trooper Asshole. Refused To Have Mugshot Taken."

The article with this headline helpfully included a mug shot of Talbot.

Talbot wasn't done yet. He was released on conditions, and went out to buy 900 to 1,000 copies of the local paper, The Times of Wayne County, from eight different stores.

Newsstand copies of the paper sell for $1.25 apiece, so this idiot might have spent as much as $1,250 on this escapade.

As is always the case with this type of thing, Talbot really made matters much worse for himself. First of all, there are no doubt subscribers to the paper that got home delivery, which Talbot could not stop.

When the stores reported that all the copies of the paper had been sold, The Times was nice enough to estocked the stores with fresh copies of the paper

Plus, as the paper notes, "Now the story has been picked up by several national news outlets."

Embarrassed yet, Mr. Talbot?