Me and dubious interactions, with police
Oct. 10th, 2018 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexFirst the narrative, then the feels
October 1 I wake up early. Not too unusual but what seems to have woken me is some combination of a high-pitched whine like a motor running on empty, and a smell that might be smoke. I have a paranoia of house fires so I head downstairs in my bathrobe to check this out. I don't hear or smell anything on the first floor and in the basement (did I leave the dryer running?) I confirm that the sound is coming from outside.
Going outside, I see there's a car that's kind of half its length up on the curb and rear wheels in the dirt/leaf pile. The driver is rapidly switching from forward to reverse in an apparent attempt to rock the car free and is not going anywhere. I go outside.
Mindful that a strange dude in a bathrobe at like 6:30AM is not the friendliest thing I keep a good couple yards from the car. I get the attention of the woman driving and she opens the window. I ask if she's OK, she avers that she is. I ask what the problem is and she tells me she's stuck (yep, got that).
She then goes on to explain that she just got out of hospital and I can see the gauze taped on the back of her left hand, like you get when you've had an IV removed. She's fully dressed but seems pretty upset. I tell her I'm going to check it out. She explains that she was (trying to) drive on a road that is... um, a couple miles from where she's at outside my house and somehow wound up here. Her speech is not super coherent. Meanwhile, I walk around to the passenger side of the car where I observe the right front wheel.
Not tire. There is no tire. Like, not a flat, not even shreds. It's GONE. There is no tire there, anymore. The wheel itself is all kinds of hacked up. That is the source of the faint smoke smell and also the mechanical whining sound - the grinding of the rim against asphalt.
I ask if she has someone she can call because there is no way that car is moving. She says yes, but they're not answering. I ask if she has AAA. She says no; I offer to call mine, but she'll try to call Toyota for roadside service. She's still not terribly coherent, but at this point I figure I've done all I'm going to be able to do so I go back inside. Whereupon she starts up again trying to 'free' the vehicle. Rush hour traffic is starting to pick up and I have this vision that somehow she accomplishes what she's trying to do and ends up lurching out in front of someone and... oy.
I dither for a while and decide to call the cops, using the local non-emergency number. At a minimum, having someone to watch for traffic wouldn't hurt. While I'm on the phone with them, she gets out of the vehicle, apparently not trusting my report of its condition she tries to go around to the passenger side. She's clearly not balancing well, a fact I report to the police lady I'm talking to.
The police eventually show up and there is some kind of belligerent exchange. She gets out of the vehicle and some more heated words are exchanged, at which point she decides it's a clever idea to shove the cop. Oy. Bang up against the cruiser she goes, the cop explains in somewhat sharp language that I can't quite make out that this is not a clever plan and that she should seat herself in the police vehicle. There are two cops (both male) and she gets in the police car with one of them and away they go. A tow truck shows up and removes the vehicle.
The local police blotter only publishes occasionally so today was my first chance to get the details. Arrest for OUI - drugs (that's what I'd guessed); negligent operation of a motor vehicle (yeah very), disorderly conduct (roughing the police officer), registration not in possession, and "marked lanes violation".
Dear readers, when the hospital suggests you have someone else drive you home, TAKE THAT ADVICE. The police blotter printed her home address and she was literally just a few blocks from it when it all went wrong.
I'm still conflicted about whether I did the right things. I feel I'm on good grounds from my own interaction - never getting closer than 6-7' from her, asking about her well-being, offering AAA, describing what I saw. I feel like that's all good and helpful.
Calling the cops is not natural to me, though. I don't like cops, generally. My own history with them is not great and I don't think they ought to be the social tool of first-line problem solving for everything. But we don't have other systems. I think my local cops are pretty OK. They could have done a lot worse when she shoved (tried to shove) one of them.
And while being arrested is going to suck it's probably going to suck less than, say, having someone slam into your car on the driver's side while you're in it. And probably a lot less than, say, staggering out into traffic. Despite it being a residential area and limited visibility, people at rush hour do whip down that street at high speed. I've had a couple near misses on myself and my dog in the past few years. An impaired person might have landed in the hospital for a long stay, or worse.
All of that is true and yet. And yet... I can't escape the feeling that I should have had a better solution than calling the cops. Damned if I know what it would be.
October 1 I wake up early. Not too unusual but what seems to have woken me is some combination of a high-pitched whine like a motor running on empty, and a smell that might be smoke. I have a paranoia of house fires so I head downstairs in my bathrobe to check this out. I don't hear or smell anything on the first floor and in the basement (did I leave the dryer running?) I confirm that the sound is coming from outside.
Going outside, I see there's a car that's kind of half its length up on the curb and rear wheels in the dirt/leaf pile. The driver is rapidly switching from forward to reverse in an apparent attempt to rock the car free and is not going anywhere. I go outside.
Mindful that a strange dude in a bathrobe at like 6:30AM is not the friendliest thing I keep a good couple yards from the car. I get the attention of the woman driving and she opens the window. I ask if she's OK, she avers that she is. I ask what the problem is and she tells me she's stuck (yep, got that).
She then goes on to explain that she just got out of hospital and I can see the gauze taped on the back of her left hand, like you get when you've had an IV removed. She's fully dressed but seems pretty upset. I tell her I'm going to check it out. She explains that she was (trying to) drive on a road that is... um, a couple miles from where she's at outside my house and somehow wound up here. Her speech is not super coherent. Meanwhile, I walk around to the passenger side of the car where I observe the right front wheel.
Not tire. There is no tire. Like, not a flat, not even shreds. It's GONE. There is no tire there, anymore. The wheel itself is all kinds of hacked up. That is the source of the faint smoke smell and also the mechanical whining sound - the grinding of the rim against asphalt.
I ask if she has someone she can call because there is no way that car is moving. She says yes, but they're not answering. I ask if she has AAA. She says no; I offer to call mine, but she'll try to call Toyota for roadside service. She's still not terribly coherent, but at this point I figure I've done all I'm going to be able to do so I go back inside. Whereupon she starts up again trying to 'free' the vehicle. Rush hour traffic is starting to pick up and I have this vision that somehow she accomplishes what she's trying to do and ends up lurching out in front of someone and... oy.
I dither for a while and decide to call the cops, using the local non-emergency number. At a minimum, having someone to watch for traffic wouldn't hurt. While I'm on the phone with them, she gets out of the vehicle, apparently not trusting my report of its condition she tries to go around to the passenger side. She's clearly not balancing well, a fact I report to the police lady I'm talking to.
The police eventually show up and there is some kind of belligerent exchange. She gets out of the vehicle and some more heated words are exchanged, at which point she decides it's a clever idea to shove the cop. Oy. Bang up against the cruiser she goes, the cop explains in somewhat sharp language that I can't quite make out that this is not a clever plan and that she should seat herself in the police vehicle. There are two cops (both male) and she gets in the police car with one of them and away they go. A tow truck shows up and removes the vehicle.
The local police blotter only publishes occasionally so today was my first chance to get the details. Arrest for OUI - drugs (that's what I'd guessed); negligent operation of a motor vehicle (yeah very), disorderly conduct (roughing the police officer), registration not in possession, and "marked lanes violation".
Dear readers, when the hospital suggests you have someone else drive you home, TAKE THAT ADVICE. The police blotter printed her home address and she was literally just a few blocks from it when it all went wrong.
I'm still conflicted about whether I did the right things. I feel I'm on good grounds from my own interaction - never getting closer than 6-7' from her, asking about her well-being, offering AAA, describing what I saw. I feel like that's all good and helpful.
Calling the cops is not natural to me, though. I don't like cops, generally. My own history with them is not great and I don't think they ought to be the social tool of first-line problem solving for everything. But we don't have other systems. I think my local cops are pretty OK. They could have done a lot worse when she shoved (tried to shove) one of them.
And while being arrested is going to suck it's probably going to suck less than, say, having someone slam into your car on the driver's side while you're in it. And probably a lot less than, say, staggering out into traffic. Despite it being a residential area and limited visibility, people at rush hour do whip down that street at high speed. I've had a couple near misses on myself and my dog in the past few years. An impaired person might have landed in the hospital for a long stay, or worse.
All of that is true and yet. And yet... I can't escape the feeling that I should have had a better solution than calling the cops. Damned if I know what it would be.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-10 10:33 pm (UTC)*hug*
no subject
Date: 2018-10-11 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-10 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-11 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-11 12:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-10 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-11 03:18 am (UTC)I keep thinking there ought to have been a way. Perhaps the perfect is the enemy of the good enough.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-17 04:21 pm (UTC)As good as that gets, you chose reasonably.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-10 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-11 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-11 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-12 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-11 09:12 am (UTC)The only other thing you could have done would have been to call the local emergency mental health services, which may be Eliot Community Care in your area. (And I wouldn’t have known that existed without scary underage behavior I had to deal with.)
no subject
Date: 2018-10-12 12:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-12 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-12 01:19 am (UTC)YOU DID THE RIGHT THING.
I can go on at length as to why, but it should be self evident. The only thing I’d do differently is to call 911 next time. But that’s a minor detail.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-12 12:31 pm (UTC)I'd rather we had emergency professionals other than police available, but that's not how our society is set up.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-13 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-24 04:07 am (UTC)They are also Public Safety Officers, and Order Keepers in general.
These days, they're not always thought of as doing those latter things, and that's a sadness for me.
We would all do better if we remembered the multiple facets of their role, and tried to help them do more of these other things than always be put in positions of confrontation.
They were the right people to call for this situation. I hope the net punishment for this person's violations works out to be appropriate to their total condition, and not trapped in the letters of the law.