Note to law enforcers: alcoholics can be unpredictably dangerous
Amazing Antics: Stories of Alcoholism-Driven Behaviorsâ„¢
Just what was the officer thinking?
“THE GLAMOROUS SIDE OF DRINKING: A trooper investigating a single-car accident in Woodville, Maine, says that driver Peter Bradley Murray, 42, appeared intoxicated and had urinated on himself. But he could still see straight. “He said, ‘You have beautiful green eyes,’ and he started touching my arm,” State Trooper Jennifer Fiske said. She started to handcuff him, but only got one side on when he pulled away and tried to lock her in the other cuff, saying “I just want us to be tied together.” She whacked him with her baton and finished cuffing him. “What did he think I was going to do? Go out on a date with him?” (Bangor Daily News) …Apparently he misunderstood when she said he’d get a ‘date in court.'”
Columnist Randy Cassingham merely touched on the full story, which is a true humdinger on a variety of levels. Murray had already allegedly failed three roadside sobriety tests and refused to take another. Because Fiske’s police cruiser was not equipped with a cage separating the front and back seats, she sat Murray in the front passenger seat. Although friendly (yeah, I’ll bet) and cooperative during the tests, he began to behave “inappropriately”when he got into the cruiser. It was only at that point that she attempted to handcuff him. Just what was she thinking when she put an alcoholic in the front seat, unrestrained? The consequences could have been far worse.
With handcuffs on, Murray continued to make attempts at touching her and, at one point, made a grab for the steering wheel while en route to her station. Another officer rode with her from the station to the county jail, adding leg restraints to the already handcuffed Murray.
Fiske said, if she could do it all over again, she’d “probably”handcuff the suspect before sitting in the police cruiser with him, “but at the time he was behaving well.”Fiske, like so many law enforcers, has failed to grasp the key behavioral abnormality of alcoholism: that we cannot predict how destructive the behaviors of a practicing alcoholic may become, or when. She also rationalized that Murray must have had a very bad night. No, State Trooper Fiske: Murray was having what was likely, for him, a common night: drinking, no doubt way beyond the legal limit, getting behind the wheel of a car and, in other ways unfathomable to the non-alcoholic, acting badly.
And, a bonus antic:
“THE GLAMOROUS SIDE OF SMOKING: Jeff Foran, 38, was too drunk to drive, so he asked a friend to give him a ride home. On the highway along the Arkansas-Oklahoma border near Foreman, Ark., a gust of wind blew Foran’s cigarette out the window, so he jumped after it. The car was going 55-60 mph. Foran suffered “a substantial case of road rash,” said State Police Trooper Jamie Gravier, mainly on his face. “If anything could make him stop smoking, this should be it.” (Texarkana Gazette)…Actually, dying is what usually makes people stop smoking.”
Another State Trooper doesn’t seem to grasp the idea of alcoholism. How about, more accurately, “if anything could make him stop drinking, this should be it?”The Trooper implies that the cigarette made him jump; no, Trooper Gravier, alcoholic distortions of perception and memory leading to impaired judgment, manifesting in a sense of invincibility, is usually at the root of idiotic risk-taking behaviors.