More details have emerged about Britney Spears‘ arrest in March for suspicion of driving under the influence. According to police records obtained by The New York Times this week, Spears’ mood changed from “confrontational and agitated to flamboyant and compliant,” the officer who arrested Spears wrote in his report. “She also appeared to speak with a British accent at times.”
In addition, when Spears, 44, who has a history of mental health struggles, was pulled over for erratic driving, authorities reported finding a bottle of unprescribed Adderall and an empty wine glass in her car. Spears was charged with driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol after her arrest and earlier this month pleaded guilty to a lesser charge — reckless driving involving drugs and alcohol — and was ordered to serve 12 months’ probation.
Officers said that Spears denied being intoxicated when confronted by police around 9 p.m. on March 4 and said she’d had one mimosa earlier that afternoon. According to the paper, in a video released to the Times via a public record request, an officer can be heard asking Spears to rate her sobriety on a scale of 0-10, with the singer reportedly replying, “I could drink probably four bottles of wine and take care of you, I’m an angel.”
On Thursday (May 21), the California Highway Patrol released incident and investigative reports on the Spears arrest, as well as audio files of the dispatch and dashcam video from inside the highway patrol vehicles that transported the singer, according to the Times. The six video clips released contained more than three hours of footage, beginning on the night of March 4 with officers speeding down a highway in pursuit of Spears’ black BMW convertible, and included dashcam video of officers taking the star into custody, with the footage ending around 2 a.m. on March 5.
The report noted that after the CHP pulled Spears over, an officer smelled an odor of alcohol coming from the car, with the officer telling Spears she’d been pulled over “because you were swerving in two lanes.” Spears reportedly apologized and said she was on her phone. “You can come to my house — I’ll make you food or lasagna or whatever you want,” she told the officers in one of the videos. “I have a pool.”
Spears, wearing a sun hat, reportedly refused to exit the car at first, telling the officer that she’d been “pranked” before, then finally getting out of the vehicle 10 minutes later, at which point the officer noted that her speech was slurred and her gait was unsteady.
“I know my rights,” Spears said, while still insisting she was okay to drive. “I haven’t done anything.” Officers who evaluated Spears at the scene and at the highway patrol office said she used several different accents, sometimes speaking in a “childlike” voice. During an exam to test her level of impairment, another officer reported that she spoke “nonsensically about things that did not pertain to the exercise,” leading him to conclude that she was under the effects of alcohol and a stimulant.
The Times reported that, according to the documents, Spears told officers she takes the antidepressant Prozac, as well as Lamictal for epilepsy and “mood swings,” and Adderall, a prescription stimulant typically used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), to stay “elevated.” In her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, Spears denied reports that she had a long-running substance abuse issue, while writing that her “drug of choice” was Adderall, and that she was taking “a lot” of it to deal with depression in 2008 before she was put in a restrictive 13-year conservatorship.
Her Breathalyzer tests showed a blood alcohol concentration of .05 percent and .06 percent according to the report, which are under the legal limit of .08% in California. When asked to go to a hospital to take a blood test, the documents reported that Spears became “argumentative and belligerent” and was then transported in handcuffs to have the blood samples taken, with the results not disclosed in the initial arrest report.
At one point in the video footage obtained by the Times, Spears reportedly told the officers they were being “mean to me” and “lying” as she sat in the back of a police cruiser, claiming, “I didn’t have a D.U.I.! I wasn’t even drinking.” Spears was booked into jail on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol and released the next morning.
In April, a spokesperson for Spears said she had voluntarily checked herself into a treatment facility. To date, Spears has not made any official public statements about her arrest or plea deal.
