An employee of the city's Department of Homeless Services is accused of having a bit too much to drink before reporting to work on New Year's Day. Nathaniel Chambers, 45, is suspected of drunk driving on his way to pick up Commissioner Robert Hess, who was waiting for a ride to the Mayor's inauguration yesterday morning.
Chambers ran into trouble when he drove his city-issued Ford Explorer — which wasn't equipped with an E-ZPass — into an E-ZPass-only lane at the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge toll plaza. According to the Post, he tried to convince tollbooth workers to lift the gate by flashing a red siren sitting on the dashboard. When police approached the vehicle, they knew something was wrong. "When he rolled down the window, he smelled of alcohol," a source told the Daily News. Chambers tried to tell police he was in a hurry, but that didn't help. "He was pretty drunk and he was using his position to get out of it."
When officers told Chambers to step out of the vehicle, he reportedly "couldn't even stand up straight," became belligerent, and called a sergeant a "cracker." The Daily News reports that Chambers refused to take a Breathalyzer test, so one of the officers held the machine in front of his mouth while he shouted at them, registering a blood-alcohol level of .089 — just above the legal limit of .08 even though the test wasn't properly administered. Officers then cuffed Chambers and brought him to the 25th Precinct stationhouse in Harlem, where he again refused to be tested.
When he was released yesterday night, Chambers — who was fined $750 for a DWI in 2003 in which he recorded a .10 blood-alcohol level — told reporters: "I wasn't drunk." Department of Homeless Services officials said they are conducting their own investigation of the incident. Commissioner Hess got to City Hall in time to see Bloomberg sworn in for his third time, though he traveled there "by his own means."
