Taking the police to court.
A former Bravo reality TV star and member of a ’90s girl group is suing the Tennessee Highway Patrol after being arrested for DUI – despite being completely sober.
The lawsuit was actually filed back in May by Stefanie Fair, a former child actress with roles in shows like The Golden Girls, Married… with Children and The Facts of Life. She was also a singer for the ’90s girl group Wild Orchid alongside Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie, which had some minor success with singles like “Talk to Me” and “At Night I Pray.” More recently, Fair was a member of the cast of the Bravo reality television series There Goes the Motherhood.
But unfortunately, Fair found herself in the headlines not for her career, but for what the Tennessee Highway Patrol claimed was driving under the influence here in Nashville back on June 23, 2024.
Body cam footage shows Fair being arrested for DUI by trooper Keith Velez despite telling the officer that she hadn’t had anything to drink. And it also shows the trooper claiming that Fair had failed a field sobriety test known as the horizontal gaze nystagmus test, claiming that her eyes “were bouncing.”
Fair was arrested and taken to jail where she was finally administered a blood test – which months later would prove that Fair was telling the truth and had no alcohol or drugs in her system.
Unfortunately, Fair isn’t alone. For the past several years, stories have been piling up of Tennessee troopers arresting sober drivers not just in Nashville but all around the state. The problem was so widespread that the state legislature passed a law requiring law enforcement to track these so-called “sober DUI” arrests, and in recently-released data for 2024 it turns out 419 arrests were made for DUI of individuals who were later proven not to have drugs or alcohol in their system.
Obviously it’s a major problem, which costs these wrongfully-accused individuals tens of thousands of dollars as well as immeasurable personal consequences when they’re falsely arrested. So Fair decided to fight back, and filed the lawsuit against Velez in federal court here in Tennessee.
In her complaint, which has been obtained by Whiskey Riff, Fair accuses Velez of violating her Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to be free from false arrest, malicious prosecution and illegal search. She also alleges that the trooper improperly administered the field sobriety tests (side note, which I would never agree to do in the first place), and lacked probable cause to make the arrest.
She also says that the incident caused her embarrassment because within hours of the arrest, Fair and her husband, a music industry veteran who has held executive positions at several labels and produced albums for names like Tanya Tucker, Christina Aguilera and The Black Eyed Peas, began receiving calls offering to help get her mugshot taken down – for a fee of thousands of dollars.
Fair claims that the trooper knew or should have known that she wasn’t intoxicated, and is asking a court to award her damages for not only physical and emotional pain and suffering but also punitive damages against the officer.
In his answer to the complaint, Velez denies doing anything wrong or violating Fair’s civil rights – but last month, notice was filed that the parties had agreed to settle the case.
The settlement has to be approved by the Tennessee Attorney General, a process that’s expected to take up to five months, but which also means that it’s taxpayers who are on the hook for this officer falsely arresting someone for DUI when they were stone cold sober.
It’s an issue that’s gotten a lot of attention lately here in Nashville, and hopefully one that both police and the legislature are working to ensure doesn’t continue to happen.
