What would you do? Act rationally–or irrationally?
What would you do…:
If you’re sitting in your nephew’s front yard drinking beer together and you give him $6 to go buy more beer, and he pedals off on his bicycle in the summer heat while you wait and it takes too long, you would:
1. Call your nephew to make sure he hasn’t been involved in an accident,
2. Call the police to see if there are any reports of an accident involving a bicyclist between your place and the beer place, or
3. Smash a brand new soon-to-be installed toilet against his front door and, after shattering it hurl porcelain chunks at the door and then rip electrical wires out of the meter box and smash the plastic piping of the front yard water well onto the asphalt street?
Congratulations if you selected option #3, which was the preferred choice of 60-year-old Kenneth Charles Stuck of Pasco County, Florida. It’s not the first antic for which Mr. Stuck is guilty: more than two years ago he was trying to punch passing cars on a U.S. Highway, apparently when he was on his way to buy more beer. Gone unreported, which is unfortunate for those of us who enjoy reading non-fiction reports of alcoholics doing what they do best, are the likely thousand-plus other antics that have occurred over the drinking career of Mr. Stuck, as well as nearly every other 60-year-old person having the disease of alcoholism.
If you’re a cop and sitting with a friend at the Colorado National Golf Club clubhouse bar in Erie, Colorado, and you’re watching a Rockies baseball game on TV, when two other men pick up the remote and change the channel to the final College World Series Championship game, do you:
1. Quietly and calmly discuss who has the right to decide on which game to watch and try to reach an amicable decision,
2. Report what could be a violation of your rights, since you were first, to the clubhouse manager and hope they can set the other two straight,
3. If that doesn’t bring some sense of justice to the other two, call the police department and ask that a fellow on-duty officer be dispatched to the scene, or
4. Allow a heated exchange of words to quickly escalate to a physical confrontation in which you and your friend punch at least one of the other men in the face?
Congratulations if you selected option #4, which is exactly what 37-year-old Kevin Carlile, a five-year veteran of the Denver Police Department and Christopher Douglas, 39, did to the other two men. Imagine this, too: all four men had been “drinking,” which is most frequently a euphemism for “drinking alcoholically.” Carlile has been taken off his usual patrol duty pending the outcome of the investigation. Nine other officers have been fired for cause from the Denver P.D. since March, which suggests a lot of alcoholism on the force. Now, wouldn’t it be so much easier if cops were simply screened for alcoholism and treated appropriately?