By
Ciara O'Rourke and Tony Plohetski
Late
one night last August, a state trooper arrested Austin police officer Ricardo
Zapata after smelling alcohol during a traffic stop. Zapata was also slurring,
according to Austin Police Department records, and he nearly fell over while
getting out of his car. The trooper charged him with drunken driving, and a
blood sample later found his blood alcohol content was more than twice the
legal limit.
Four
months ago, Police Chief Art Acevedo fired Zapata, and, in a publicly released
letter of suspension, declared that Zapata could no longer be on the force
because he had failed to act responsibly and had destroyed the community’s
confidence in the department’s goals of combating DWI.