When Britney Spears was pulled over for erratic driving this year, the authorities found unprescribed Adderall and an empty wine glass in her car, and struggled to take the pop star through the arrest process as she swung between compliance and belligerence, according to police records released on Thursday.
Ms. Spears, who has a history of mental health and substance abuse issues, was charged with driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol after her arrest in March. She pleaded guilty to a lesser charge — reckless driving involving alcohol and drugs — and will serve 12 months probation.
“Her mood changed from confrontational and agitated to flamboyant and compliant,” the officer who arrested Ms. Spears wrote in his report. “She also appeared to speak with a British accent at times.”
Ms. Spears denied that she was intoxicated when she was pulled over at about 9 p.m., telling the officer that she had one mimosa that afternoon, the report said.
In video released to The New York Times after a public records request, an officer asked Ms. Spears to rate her sobriety on a scale of 0 to 10.
“I could drink probably four bottles of wine and take care of you, I’m an angel,” she responded.
It has been more than four years since Ms. Spears, 44, was released from the conservatorship that had managed her life and finances for much of her adulthood. Her fans played a major role in calling for her release from the arrangement and have exulted over her newfound independence, but there have also been concerns over her erratic behavior since.
On Thursday, the California Highway Patrol released incident and investigative reports about Ms. Spears’s arrest, audio files of the dispatch and dashcam video from inside the highway patrol vehicles that transported Ms. Spears.
A representative for Ms. Spears did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the footage and police reports. After her arrest, a representative released a statement calling the situation “inexcusable” and saying that “hopefully this can be the first step in long overdue change that needs to occur in Britney’s life.”
The six video clips that were released contain more than three hours of footage. The videos begin on the night of March 4 with officers speeding down a highway in pursuit of a black BMW convertible. Dashcam video shows the officers taking Ms. Spears into custody. The footage ends after 2 a.m. on March 5.
After the highway patrol pulled Ms. Spears over, an officer smelled the odor of alcohol coming from her car, according to the arrest report.
Video of the arrest shows that an officer tells Ms. Spears he had pulled her over “because you were swerving in two lanes.” Ms. Spears apologizes, saying she was “on my phone.”
“You can come to my house — I’ll make you food or lasagna or whatever you want,” she says in the video. “I have a pool.”
Ms. Spears, who was wearing a sun hat, initially refused to exit the vehicle, telling the officer that she had been “pranked” in the past. When she eventually emerged about 10 minutes later, the officer noted that her speech was slurred and her gait unsteady.
“I know my rights,” Ms. Spears said, while insisting that she could drive. “I haven’t done anything.”
Officers who evaluated Ms. Spears both at her vehicle and after she had been transported to the highway patrol’s office noted that she assumed different accents — at times speaking in a childlike voice — during the arrest and had drastic shifts in her demeanor.
When she was undergoing an examination to test her level of impairment, she would “talk nonsensically about things that did not pertain to the exercise,” wrote another officer who evaluated Ms. Spears. He concluded that she had been under the combined effects of alcohol and a stimulant.
Her breath tests showed blood alcohol concentrations of .05 percent and .06 percent, the report said, which are under the legal limit in California.
According to the documents, Ms. Spears told officers that she takes Prozac, an antidepressant, and Lamictal, which she said she takes for epilepsy and “mood swings.” She said she also took Adderall to stay “elevated,” the report said.
When she was asked to go to a hospital to take a blood test, the documents said, she became “argumentative and belligerent.” She was then transported in handcuffs. Blood samples were taken, but the results were not disclosed in the arrest report.
In one video time stamped just before midnight, while Ms. Spears was in the back of a patrol car, she says through tears that the officers are being “mean to me.” She complains that the officers are “lying” and that her handcuffs hurt.
“I didn’t have a D.U.I.!” she says, “I wasn’t even drinking.”
A couple of hours later, as she is being transported elsewhere, her tone changes.
“I don’t like it; I’m scared,” Ms. Spears can be heard telling an officer from the back of his patrol car. She asks the officer if she will still be able to drive following the arrest and says, “I just want to go home.”
“I can’t take you home,” the officer tells her.
Ms. Spears was then booked into jail on suspicion of violating a part of California’s vehicle code that says it is unlawful “for a person who is under the combined influence of any alcoholic beverage and drug to drive a vehicle.” She was released in the morning, and her plea deal allows her to avoid further jail time.
About a month later, a representative for Ms. Spears said she had voluntarily checked herself into a treatment facility. Her plea deal includes a three-month substance abuse program.
One of the most bankable pop singers of the early and mid-2000s, Ms. Spears made her name with chart-topping hits such as “… Baby One More Time” and “Womanizer.”
In a 2023 memoir that chronicled her career and personal struggles, she disputed the idea that she had a persistent substance abuse problem but wrote that her “drug of choice” had been Adderall, which is prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
She wrote that she took it to ease feelings of depression and that she had been taking “a lot” of the prescription drug in early 2008, before she was first put under the conservatorship.
“I probably shouldn’t admit to this,” she wrote in the book, “but I was hell on wheels.”
Michaela Towfighi contributed reporting from New York.
Matt Stevens is a Times reporter who writes about arts and culture from Los Angeles.
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