A police officer arrested a sober man for DUI. Turns out, he’d done it twice before.

Goodlettsville, Tenn. (WSMV) - At 5:52 on the morning of September 6, 2023, Jeff Adams was working the first of his two jobs when blue lights appeared in his rearview mirror.

Adams, a 6th-grade teacher at Brentwood Middle School for 29 years, also works as an Uber driver to make extra money.

According to Adams, the patrol officer who approached, Noah Werner of Goodlettsville police, asked him first if he’d been drinking.

“I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t do drugs,” Adams can be heard saying on cell phone video recorded by another officer on the scene.

But Werner said he had observed Adams swerving, and the teacher offered to take a field sobriety test.

“I figured I could pass it. I wasn’t drinking,” Adams said. “I was on my way to school. It was 5:52 a.m.”

The cell phone video shows Adams didn’t do well standing on one leg, but his surprise is evident when Werner tells him to put his hands behind his back.

“You’re under arrest for a DUI,” Werner says in the recording.

“Sir, I have not drank a thing,” Adams responds. It would take four months to prove that Adams wasn’t lying. Both his alcohol and toxicology reports showed he was completely sober.

Still, Werner documented in the affidavit for Adams arrest that he showed several signs of impairment. Ultimately, the case against Adams was dismissed, though the damage was already done.

As a result of the arrest, Adams was suspended from working for Uber, ultimately costing him, according to his calculations, roughly $15,000 in lost income.

Though Brentwood Middle School did not fire him pending the conclusion of the case, he still feared that his students would find out.

“It’s the most traumatic experience. To know that I’m being arrested. Fingerprinted. Mugshotted,” Adams said, his voice cracking. “All a man’s got is his reputation. And his name. It’s getting smeared, and I didn’t appreciate it.”

“Chokes you up a little bit,” WSMV4 Investigates observed.

“It does,” Adams said.

And a WSMV4 Investigation found Adams wasn’t the only DUI arrest ultimately dismissed or unable to be prosecuted in 2023.

A review of Werner’s DUI arrests show two other sober drivers were arrested by Werner in 2023.

“There’s a problem. There’s a pattern, that’s what this is,” Adams said.

WSMV4 Investigates requested an interview with officer Werner, but his boss, police chief Gary Goodwin, said he would answer our questions instead.

In reviewing the cases, Goodwin said the drivers are owed an apology.

“I certainly regret that, and I really deeply hurt for what they went through,” Goodwin told WSMV4 Investigates.

“If you had one case, it would be one thing. In this officer’s case, you have three people who were sober and arrested for a DUI. What does that tell you?” asked WSMV4 Investigates.

“It doesn’t necessarily tell me anything, but obviously, it’s concerning. You hate it for these three people,” Goodwin said.

Goodwin describes Werner as a relatively new officer who is conscientious, caring and wants to do a good job.

“He doesn’t want to take anybody into custody that shouldn’t be,” Goodwin said.

The police chief also admits he’s frustrated by the entire situation.

In the affidavits of the three drivers, Adams writes that each showed signs of impairment. In one of the cases, a driver had a half empty beer can in the driver’s side door.

Yet all were ultimately found to be sober. “I’m looking at these, and I’m not sure how I can fix this,” Goodwin said.

An ongoing WSMV4 Investigation found police departments throughout Middle Tennessee have arrested sober people for DUIs. And because of a backlog at the TBI for alcohol and toxicology reports, we found some innocent drivers are waiting eight months to get results back.

In many cases, sober drivers are asking for breathalyzers, but some police departments aren’t using them, something the TBI doesn’t understand.

Adams can be heard asking for a breathalyzer in the cell phone video.

“Do you have a breathalyzer of something I can take?” Adams asks.

“We’ll get that,” Werner said.

But that’s not what happened. In body camera footage, Adams can be seen in a hospital getting a blood draw before being taken to jail.

“Why not sure a breathalyzer each time, it would at least tell you if that person had been drinking,” asked WSMV4 Investigates.

“So many of the people we see now are under the influence, and it’s not necessarily alcohol,” Goodwin said.

A blood test, Goodwin points out, is the only way to know for sure that someone isn’t impaired, either using alcohol, illegal drugs or using an improper dosage of prescription drugs.

Still, Goodwin says he struggles with the reality of the innocent people arrested for the serious crime.

“I just put myself in their positions, and how would I feel if this happened to me?” Goodwin said.

Adams said he knows how it feels, each and every time he drives past where he was arrested.

“Sometimes I’ll refer to it as the scene of the crime. It was. It was a crime against me,” Adams said.

If there’s anything you want WSMV4 Investigates to know about, you can contact us here.

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