Police reveal the lapel video of ex-Lobo Carlton Bragg’s drunkdriving arrest
Refusal to take breath test led to upgraded charge
The machine was ready and the New Mexico Lobo basketball player was moments from taking a blood alcohol test when he apparently decided against it.
“No, I told you my name and everything,” Carlton Bragg told his arresting officer, who reminded Bragg again that he would automatically be charged with aggravated driving while intoxicated if he refused the test.
“I don’t understand but I’ll see you in court,” Bragg, 24, said before he was whisked away to jail.
Albuquerque police on Wednesday released on-body camera footage of Bragg’s arrest on suspicion of DWI earlier this month. The senior was removed from the basketball team that same day.
Bragg drove a white BMW through a sobriety checkpoint near Broadway and Coal at around 1:20 a.m. on Jan. 12, hours after Bragg had played in the Lobos’ win against Air Force at the Pit. It was Bragg’s second game back after serving a three-game suspension stemming from an allegation by a 20-year-old woman that he tried to have sex with her against her will last summer.
The footage shows Bragg exit the car and perform several field sobriety tests.
He was compliant and polite with the officer as Bragg attempted to perform three tests. The video shows that while Bragg admitted to drinking two glasses of wine between 9 and 10 p.m., he wasn’t noticeably impaired during the tests. But the officer said Bragg demonstrated several cues that he wasn’t fit to be driving — he kept moving his head during an eye test and he didn’t count out loud when holding his foot up in the air, for example.
The officer then placed Bragg in handcuffs and the UNM senior’s demeanor changed for the rest of his encounter with police. He kept insisting that he passed the field tests, and called for a woman he was with to reach his lawyer.
The officers directed him to a mobile command center where he could perform the blood-alcohol test, and the officers told him that New Mexico law required that drivers submit to such testing.
“If I go in there my rights are gone,” Bragg said at one point.
Once inside, the video footage shows Bragg becoming uncooperative. He at times refuses to answer the police’s request for his name, birthday and social security number. He says his leg itches and asks the officer to scratch it. He asks to speak with his girlfriend multiple times and asks why officers have turned off their on-body cameras.
“It’s pointing at you and it’s catching all your dumb remarks,” the officer says.
Eventually, the machine is ready for Bragg to submit a sample by blowing into it. He refuses and is taken to jail.
He is facing charges of aggravated DWI and possession of a small amount of marijuana, which was found during the booking process. The district attorney in Ruidoso has been appointed as a special prosecutor in the case.
Ian King, Bragg’s attorney, couldn’t be reached for comment on Wednesday.