NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — “Are you being arrested?”

“I’m being arrested. I don’t know why. He says he smells alcohol. I’ve done all the tests. I don’t understand.”

Those lines, captured on police body-camera video, frame a question: What happens when sobriety itself is not enough to prevent a DUI arrest?

What sounds anomalous is now documented.

According to data released by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, 419 people across Tennessee were arrested for driving under the influence in 2024 despite later blood tests showing no alcohol detected in their system: not trace amounts, not borderline results, none.

Stefanie Fair is one of them.

During her June 2024 arrest, video shows a trooper asking whether she had consumed alcohol. She answered no — “On my life.” She identified herself as a mother of four after she was asked what she does for work. She was then told to put her hands behind her back and was placed under arrest for DUI.

Fair has since filed a lawsuit.

In it, she alleges the trooper improperly administered field sobriety tests, handcuffed her, unlawfully induced her consent for a blood draw, and took her to jail without probable cause. Months later, when the results arrived, they showed no alcohol detected and no basic drugs detected.

Yet the arrest did not vanish with the lab report.

In another body-camera exchange, a second trooper asks what happened. The arresting officer responds that Fair nearly struck him during a traffic stop and added, “She says she doesn’t drink. You can see it in her eyes — they were bouncing.”

Those impressions met science, and that science arrived late.

Fair, a former Bravo reality television star and singer, said the arrest lingered well beyond her release. Her attorney, Ben Raybin, said the damage was magnified by the internet.

“Stefanie suffered tremendous harm from having her mugshot and the description of the incident all over the internet,” Raybin said. “People were making comments and saying all these horrible things about her, which is not the case, but of course, when things are on the internet, they are there forever.”

Fair’s experience is not isolated.

The scope of the issue only became visible after the passage of a state law last year requiring Tennessee to release DUI arrest data in cases where blood tests later showed no alcohol detected.

The TBI data shows the Tennessee Highway Patrol recorded 37 such DUI arrests in Nashville, followed by 16 in Sumner County and 11 by the La Vergne Police Department, among others statewide.

State Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis), a sponsor of the legislation, said the numbers were precisely what lawmakers sought.

“It confirms over 400 arrests over sober DUIs,” Akbari said. “It looks like a lot of activity occurred with Highway Patrol in specific counties, so we can look at what needs to be tweaked and have conversations with law enforcement officers, with different lawmakers to see if we can have policy with these sober DUIs. That’s ultimately what we wanted the numbers for.”

The Tennessee Highway Patrol has not commented on Fair’s lawsuit.

It is important to note Metro Nashville Police Department operates its own crime lab, so those numbers do not include MNPD DUI cases.