What would the punishment be in this case?

Wasting precious police worktime.

Depends on the officer.

I don’t think that’s illegal behavior, so they wouldn’t be supposed to do anything to you.

But they could try various things (minor infractions) if they thought it was worth their time, but since a charge would involve paperwork and possible court appearance, they might not bother.

I’d tend to expect and hope they’d just let you go and go do something more productive.

If you intentionally fail their physical sobriety tests they’ll assume you’re on some other intoxicant and arrest you. They’ll probably have blood drawn and you had better pray there is no false positive on something. You’ll probably spend a night in jail.

Oh you’d go to jail for false report or interference in police business. Like calling 911 for pizza.

Charged with mischief.

interfering with an officer doing his duty or maybe filing a false police report.

I’m going to ask the cop at work.

Obstruction of justice.

I think it’s probably like a false report. Just guessing.

Behaving silly is not making a report.

How about disorderly conduct?

I think it would depend on the behavior, but behaving like you’re drunk by itself seems to me unlikely to be worthy of any charge.

Drunk and disorderly whilst sober.

@Zaku What if you call 911 acting silly? How is it different? Wasting the time of our police officers while others might need them. I remember in Florida if you called the police to your house multiple times they would fine you. Businesses that had false fire alarms and the fire trucks showed up would get fined too.

Since they do charge people for carrying a dangerous weapon during the commission of a felony when you shoot or stab someone, I can see them creating a charge for acting silly like pretending to be drunk…even IF it’s walking or talking while stupid!!!

@JLeslie The differences include:

Calling 911 acting silly is:
* wasting a needed emergency response communication channel
* explicitly against the law
* actively initiated by the silly person
* making an actual report

And yet, people who call 911 with silly or even hostile nonsense are often given multiple warnings before being charged.

In contrast, being randomly stopped by police for no reason, and then acting intoxicated, is:
* adding a cause for suspicion to a resource already allocated to mostly investigating innocent people
* not explicitly against the law
* passively behaving in a certain way, which may cause an officer to make an incorrect conclusion, (but that shows how drawing conclusions from behavior is not a reliable way to determine intoxication)
* not making a report in any way
* possibly an exercise of Constitutionally-protected freedom

Of course, it depends on how exactly the person behaves. And I’m not saying it’s wise and not wasting police time. But wasting police time in non-emergency situations is generally not a crime.

And it just doesn’t fit the description of “false report”.