Body camera footage obtained exclusively by The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red shows Democrat candidate Krista Perez admitting to a Tacoma Police officer that she drank wine, declining field sobriety tests while pleading to go home first, and sobbing prayers in the back of a patrol car after her DUI arrest.
Perez is the Democrat who won the August 4 primary in the 29th Legislative District, Position 1, and faces incumbent Representative Melanie Morgan in November. The Jason Rantz Show first reported her arrest after police say her 2019 Chevrolet Silverado struck a parked car on South G Street shortly after midnight on August 11. The crash allegedly set off a chain reaction that damaged five vehicles. Tacoma prosecutors later charged her with DUI, with a refusal enhancement.
The footage, recorded on the arresting officer’s body-worn camera, is one of several videos obtained by The Jason Rantz Show. Seattle Red reviewed the videos in full and understand there are more to be released. They show the roadside questioning, the arrest, and the minutes after Perez was placed in the cruiser. Her speech is slurred at points, her answers wander, and her mood swings from seemingly combative, to laughing, to tearful.
Perez admits to wine from a friend’s business
Early in the encounter, Perez said she doesn’t understand what’s happening and initially said she didn’t get into an accident. When the DUI officer asks what happened, she has no answer.
“Did you get into an accident here?” the officer asks.
“I did not,” Perez responds, looking seemingly dazed or tired.
“What happened then?” the officer replied.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been in an accident before,” she tells him.
She also said she recently switched insurers, a detail worth noting for the car owners on South G Street. One of them, Don McIntyre, told The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red 770 AM that nobody from her campaign, insurer, or legal team had contacted him early on in the process.
Perez tells the officer she was coming from a friend’s business on Tacoma Avenue South. Then he asked the obvious question.
“Did you have anything to drink tonight?” the officer asked.
“I just had some wine while I was there,” Perez replies.
The officer pressed her on how much.
“I had a glass of wine, one glass of wine,” she said.
When he asks how big the glass was, she told him, “I think you might need to contact the business.”
The officer then asked her to rate herself on a scale of zero to ten, with zero being sober. She first answered that she wants to go home. Asked a second time, she rated herself a four.
Voluntary tests, and one repeated request
The officer offered standardized field sobriety tests and told Perez more than once that she can decline.
“So it’s a series of tests that I take you through to make sure to see if you’re impaired by alcohol, or you’re not. Are you okay with doing that? It’s totally voluntary,” he said.
Perez told him she does not know what the tests are and that she is confused by all of it. She kept coming back to the same request to leave the scene of the accident. And repeatedly explained that she was “confused.”
“Not right now. I’d like to go home first,” she said before the officer shut that down.
“You’re not going to go home first. I’m going to tell you that right now, okay? So your options between the test, yes or no, that’s going to be determined tonight, right now, not when you go home. So would you like to take these tests or no?” he asked.
“And do I have a choice?” Perez asked.
“You do have a choice. You can either say yes, or you can say no. They’re totally voluntary tests,” the officer answered.
“Yeah, I would like to go home first,” she said.
He asked whether that is a no. She said yes, and he told her to put her hands behind her back.
Washington does not require drivers to take roadside sobriety tests. The refusal enhancement in her case comes from what happened later at Tacoma Police headquarters. According to the police report filed with the charge, she failed to give a usable breath sample in three attempts before the machine timed out.
Prayers and tears in the patrol car
The officer told Perez she was under arrest for DUI and to turn around.
“Hold on. Hold on. One second. Hold on,” she says.
Over the next few minutes, Perez told the officer over a dozen times that she did “not know what any of this means.” He tried to spell it out.
“It means you’re under arrest for DUI. All right?” he tells her.
At the patrol car, and then inside it, she cries and prays in Spanish.
“Dios, ayúdame por favor. Ayúdame por favor,” Perez says, asking God for help.
She adds, in Spanish, that she does not understand what is happening to her. The officer offers to help her into the back seat, and she accepts.
“Yes, I do need help,” Perez says.
After he reads her Miranda rights, the prayers continue between his booking questions.
“Help me, God. Help me. Help me. Holy Spirit, help me, God,” she says.
The officer asks whether she has ever had a DUI before.
“Never, never,” Perez says.
He tells her she is headed to headquarters for processing.
Washington Democrats have weathered drinking scandals before
State law does not bar someone with a DUI charge from serving in the Legislature, and Perez would not be the first Democrat to keep a seat after an alcohol-fueled embarrassment.
In February 2018, Spokane Democrat Timm Ormsby was the chief budget writer in the House when he rolled his Jeep into a Thurston County yard. He had come from a budget meeting and drinks with a lobbyist at a bar. He registered a .09 on a breath test at the jail, according to Northwest News Network. Ormsby apologized and blamed a distracting text from his wife. He later pleaded guilty to reckless driving instead of DUI.
In February of this year, The Jason Rantz Show was first to report that House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, a West Seattle Democrat, was drunk during a House Appropriations Committee hearing on the state budget. Four Republican lawmakers in the room told the show he slurred his words at times. Fitzgibbon owned up to what happened in a statement to Seattle Red.
“I made a poor choice last night by drinking alcohol before we had finished our work for the day. I am disappointed in myself and take responsibility for that poor choice. It won’t happen again, and I’m committed to completing my work this session without alcohol,” Fitzgibbon said.
House Speaker Laurie Jinkins said Fitzgibbon’s behavior failed to meet the chamber’s standards, but Democratic leaders stood with him.
Silence from Perez
Neither the Perez campaign nor her attorney responded to requests for comment for this story by publication deadline. If they do, this story will be updated. Her attorney said he was in a trial when he was reached. Perez is presumed innocent, and nothing on the video has been tested in court.
In comments to the Washington State Standard, the attorney, Bryan G. Hershman, said he hopes “we can stay focused on an important campaign” and downplayed the seriousness of the charge.
“We’re talking about a DUI,” he said. “It’s not like we’re talking about felony murder here.”
Under state law, a first DUI conviction with a refusal carries a mandatory minimum of 48 hours in jail. Perez is due in Tacoma Municipal Court for arraignment Friday morning, and she is still asking 29th District voters to send her to write Washington’s laws.
Update 09-16-26 at 1:45pm: While Hershman did not respond to our request for comment, he sent the following to our sister station KIRO Newsradio: “I will not be responding to this email at this time.”
Listen to The Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3 p.m. – 7 p.m. on Seattle Red on 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow Jason Rantz on X, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.
Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz
