Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate and former Florida congressman Allen West is demanding an apology from Dallas authorities after his wife, 61-year-old Angela Graham-West, was arrested on suspicion of drinking while intoxicated on Friday, Aug. 20, but the Dallas Police Department is firing back at the former Florida congressman and Army officer.
West said in a video posted to Twitter on Saturday that upon returning home from Waco, “I find out that someone had arrested my wife Angela when she had my grandson Jaxton in the back seat of the car and charged her with, quote-unquote, suspected DUI.” West said his wife had gone to a P.F. Chang’s with friends and drank water and lemonade.
West said 3-month-old Jaxton was left with two Dallas officers and that one of his daughters went to pick him up after Graham-West was arrested and taken to jail. West claims his wife was not drinking alcohol but had taken two Excedrin pills, and he demanded an apology.
“Chief of Police Garcia of Dallas Police Department, Mayor Eric Johnson Mayor of Dallas, and Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot, you will come to my house and you will publicly apologize to my wife, to my grandson, Jaxton, and to his parents,” he said.
He also called for the officer who arrested his wife to be fired and posted pictures of receipts from that night that show the items Graham-West ordered.
West, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, resigned this summer as chair of the Texas Republican Party and subsequently announced that he would challenge Gov. Greg Abbott for his seat. The former one-term congressman from Florida’s 22nd District, served in engagements in Kuwait in 1991 and Iraq in 2003 before retiring after admitting to mistreating an Iraqi captive.
Once known as a controversial figure in the Republican Party, he said in 2012 that he’d heard that up to 80 House Democrats were Communist Party members. He then declared in 2014 that then-President Barack Obama was an Islamist following his decision to release of five Taliban in exchange for former captive Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
“Barack Hussein Obama is an Islamist in his foreign policy perspectives and supports their cause,” West wrote at the time.
Dallas police said Graham-West was pulled over on West Northwest Highway in Dallas at 8:44 p.m. after an officer “had reasons to believe the driver may be intoxicated.” West then allegedly failed a sobriety test and was taken to the Dallas County Jail to undergo a blood test to determine her blood alcohol level. The results of the test are pending. Angela was released on Saturday and faces a charge of driving while intoxicated with a child under 15.
Angela told an officer she might be off-balance during some of the tests because she had previously suffered a brain aneurysm, West said. Angela took two breathalyzer tests before going to the jail but the officer told her she was doing it incorrectly, he added.
He criticized the police Saturday, saying, “Now, I support the thin blue line, but this is insidious,” West said. “They put my grandson at risk, at jeopardy, left him with a couple of police officers, and carted his grandmother into jail when she had water and lemonade.”
The Dallas Police Association union defended the officer’s actions in a statement. “Our officer was doing her job to protect the public and enforce the law,” the DPA said.
Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia held a press conference Monday and showed video of the arrest as he also defended the arresting officer. The video depicts Graham-West driving down a a highway weaving out of her lane into the emergency lane multiple times before the officer gets behind her and turns on his flashers.
“When we are wrong, we are wrong, and we will hold ourselves accountable,” Garcia said, adding that the breathalyzer test was inconclusive. “But no police chief can sit idly by while his officers get falsely vilified. False representation of my officers cannot go unchecked. They work too hard and sacrifice too much.”
