A Seattle police lieutenant who was allowed to supervise a Seattle Police Department security detail at President Obama's inauguration after he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving pleaded not guilty this morning.
Donnie R. Lowe, 42, entered the plea through his attorney, Jeffrey Veitch, in King County District Court in Redmond.
Lowe was cited for driving under the influence Nov. 23 after being stopped on Interstate 5 in South Seattle by a State Patrol trooper.
A blood-alcohol test administered to Lowe about an hour after the stop registered 0.113 percent, above the state's legal limit of 0.08 percent for those over 21, according to a State Patrol report.
Officers convicted of drunken driving can face internal discipline, often a suspension.
A police spokesman previously declined to comment on the arrest.
But the spokesman noted that Lowe began working on the inauguration assignment before the incident and carried out his duty to supervise a 42-member Seattle police detail assisting in the Jan. 20 inaugural in Washington, D.C. Lowe works in the department's Homeland Security Bureau, overseeing planning for special events and disaster management.
Lowe, who was with a passenger, was stopped about 1:45 a.m. after a trooper noticed his car drifting in the lanes, the State Patrol report said.
The trooper recognized an odor of alcohol in the car and saw a glass filled with a dark-colored liquid that smelled of alcohol in the middle drink holder, the report said. Lowe had bloodshot and watery eyes, the trooper wrote.
Lowe's record with the Police Department includes a written reprimand following a June 2006 incident in which he entered a jail cell and made inappropriate physical contact with his son, then 13, who had been arrested for obstructing officers and was handcuffed.
The boy alleged he was punched and pushed against a wall, while Lowe told internal investigators he grabbed the boy by his sweat shirt and pulled him up from a bench in way that was "not gentle," according to police records.
The City Attorney's Office reviewed the case but declined to bring charges, citing proof problems and a parent's right to discipline a child, the records show.
Lowe also received an oral reprimand stemming from a September 2002 incident in which he entered a private home in an attempt to recover nude photographs of a woman he knew from a man who reportedly had been romantically involved with her.
In 2007, a citizen-review-board report cited that case as one of several in which Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske reduced disciplinary findings. The director of the department's Office of Professional Accountability had recommended findings of misuse of authority and violation of rules, regulations and laws, the board said.
Kerlikowske reached a lesser finding, concluding that the officer engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer, the report said.
Kerlikowske has come under scrutiny in recent years for softening officer discipline.
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