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Officer Patrick Des Rosiers knew, too, that he was drunk.

Perry, wearing a black polo shirt and tan cargo shorts, was bleeding from a head wound and disoriented. He’d urinated in his shorts. The officer called emergency medical technicians to Perry’s home on Calico Creek, but he refused care.

“How much did you have to drink?” Des Rosiers asked, as heard in body camera video released by the San Antonio Police Department late Thursday.

“I had a good time… had a good time,” Perry responded.

At another point, the officer said, “It appears you might have been driving while intoxicated.”

On Thursday, Police Chief William McManus said the SAPD would refer a drunken driving charge to the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office. That would be in addition to a charge of failing to stop and provide information after an accident — for which Perry was arrested Thursday.

He was released the same day on $2,000 bail.

The black Honda Civic sustained “major damage,” according to a police report. The car’s driver appeared to be uninjured.

DUI and fleeing an accident scene are Class B misdemeanors, each punishable by a fine of up $2,000 and/or 180 days in jail.

Selected clips from SAPD bodycam footage of hit-and-run investigation involving District 10 Councilman Clayton Perry at this home. Video: San Antonio Police Department

Des Rosier’s last words to the Northeast Side councilman on Sunday night were: “Do not drive any more tonight.”

And then he left — without arresting Perry, 67, or administering a sobriety test.

Some of the 8,000 people who’d watched the SAPD body camera footage on YouTube by Friday afternoon may have wanted to know: Why wasn’t Perry taken in on a DWI charge?

SAPD Sgt. Washington Moscoso said Des Rosiers was unable to establish “probable cause” that Perry had been drinking and driving that night. In other words, there wasn’t a clear connection between the two actions.

Des Rosiers was the only officer assigned to the scene of the hit-and-run, according to Moscoso. He had to take witness statements and wait for a tow truck to clear the scene before he could go to Perry’s house — “a long time lapse,” Moscoso said.

Perry “could have been in the crash, gone home and had seven beers and gone into his yard,” Moscoso said. “So you look at the video and say, ‘Yeah, he was drunk.’ But at the time, the officer couldn’t prove he was drunk at the time of the accident.”

The crash occurred at 9:08 p.m., according to the arrest warrant for Perry. The time stamp on Des Rosiers’ body camera video as he approached Perry’s house showed 10:15 p.m., an hour and seven minutes after the accident.

As he questioned Perry, Des Rosiers knew, or at least strongly suspected, from an eyewitness account that he had caused a scene in the drive-thru lane of a Bill Miller-Bar-B-Q on Thousand Oaks. According to an affidavit issued later, Perry attempted to hand the cashier his keys and wallet and slurringly demanded to see the manager, just minutes before the hit-and-run at Jones Maltsberger and Redland.

But Des Rosiers still hadn’t seen a key piece of evidence.

“The investigation later, when detectives see the video from Bill Miller and talk to witnesses, they can go back and see that — but that night the officer didn’t have the luxury to get all of the pieces of the puzzle,” Moscoso said.

McManus on Thursday defended SAPD’s handling of Perry’s case, saying his political position had no bearing on the investigation. “There was some chatter that it was different because of who it was, but that was the furthest from the truth,” he said.

San Antonio criminal defense attorney John Hunter said the officer might not have asked Perry to take a field sobriety test because Des Rosiers hadn’t caught him behind the wheel of his Jeep. Also, Perry appeared to have a head injury.

“Head trauma and intoxication often mirror each other,” Hunter said. Even if the officer had administered a sobriety test, he added, it would have been difficult to enter the results as evidence in court because of the injury.

On Wednesday, Perry released a statement confirming the crash, saying, “I clearly hit my head and don’t really remember it.” He said he spent a day and a half at Brooke Army Medical Center “for treatment and observation.”

Hunter also questioned whether the officer erred by trespassing on Perry’s property without obtaining a warrant.

“The first question we should be asking is: Should there have been any kind of face-to-face interaction with him at all?” he said.

However, he added, police can go on a person’s property without a warrant if there’s reason to think the owner is injured or in danger. Des Rosier said in his incident report that he heard Perry “moaning” in the backyard as he approached his house.

‘Mystery driver’

Des Rosiers’ tone was mocking at times.

As the officer was preparing to leave, Perry attempted to use his credit cards to open his back door, as if the door had a card reader lock. “It’s just a standard lock — you’re going to need a key,” Des Rosiers said.

After asking the three-term councilman if his house key was in Perry’s Jeep Wrangler, he added, “Or did the mystery driver run off with those, too?”

At another point, Des Rosiers was more serious.

“I’m surprised that you haven’t even asked about the people that you hit, if they’re OK or not,” he said. “You were involved in a motor vehicle crash tonight.”

“What?” Perry exclaimed.

William Spelman, an expert on municipal policing and professor emeritus at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, watched the body camera footage and saw a lot of gray areas.

“The guy’s at home. He’s too befuddled to find his keys and looks very unlikely to get back into his car,” Spelman said. “There’s already a pending hit-and-run report, and the video of the interview will be made available to the court. Is an arrest really going to change anything?

“The officer asked the right questions and got it all on video,” he said. “I think he was within his authority to shrug his shoulders and leave the situation for the courts to figure out later.”

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