Ringo, you definitely did the right thing. And, as others have said earlier, your friend, or ex-friend, is acting like a dick.

Drink driving is stupid, selfish, disgusting and deadly. Bullshit to this faux-libertarian bravado in defending it.

I drove a car fairly merry once. I'm pretty sure the limit was exceeded. I gave up by the end of the road. It was only a short journey and I could have walked anyway.

If I'd have carried on, I would have called the cops on myself.

It is pretty inexcusable.

charliedon'tsurf wrote:since the Madison PD is the nicest bunch of cops I have ever encountered unlike Chicago pigs or the redneck pricks I grew up getting chased by.

Unrelated anecdote.

Madison is the only town where I could even imagine how the cops handled a naked drunken slip-n'-slide party we threw on our front lawn in middle of town, in the summer of 1995. We invited everybody from the Pinckney St. Hide-Away (a bar, RIP) over, at closing time.

Anyway, somebody apparently called the cops on us, because one showed up. There were cases of beer sitting in the lawn, some naked people hastily getting towels on or hiding behind other people, some obvious underage people, making noise, 2am, etc.. So the cop very politely told us that one of the neighbors who hadn't been invited wasn't having as much fun as we were. So, could we please just be more quiet.

He was so awesome about it that everybody started cheering, and he started shushing the crowd. That was about it. No tickets, no real scolding. He left as friendly as he'd arrived.

I bet I will never have an interaction with the police that's anywhere as pleasant as that for the rest of my natural life.

Madison: very much like Mars.

I am 100 percent with Soup on the DUI issue and how it has been used/propagandized. It is a crock of shit. I also have an opinion of the police that is very close to Soup's. I wish to have no truck with the police because I have been made to distrust and fear them. I do not think the profession as it stands supports honorable behavior, honest enforcement of law or even decent human compassion.

Yes, I have known decent people who have become law enforcement officers. Several of them are friends of a decade or more, and I am absolutely certain they are genuine, decent people. Why they chose this horrible line of work is not my concern, and I can only hope their innate decency survives. I have no confidence in that regard. That's how little I think of the police.

I have a couple of friends who are petty criminals. I feel pretty much the same way about them.

So, I hate the DUI laws and I hate the police.

If I had an unresponsive friend who was slopjar drunk and ignored me when I tried to get him out of his car, I would call the police without a second thought. I gave the friend method a shot, it didn't work. Having a cop involved sucks, and I hate that my friend put me in that position, but he did. If there was a big badass asshole nearby who I could enlist to help get my friend out of the car, I would, and that's what a cop is.

He can hate me for life, that's cool. He won't be getting a steering column pried out of his chest later, and that matters more. If Soup is big enough and badass enough that he can fight two drunks for their keys, then he has other options at his disposal.

The distinction is that this is an actual instance of a drunk who is driving, not a drunk who might drive, or a driver who might be drunk, or a drinker who isn't drunk driving. This is the genuine magilla, and I wouldn't be his friend (or a decent human being) if I let him do it unimpeded.

Okay guys- I'm probably in for the shitheap on this one but I've got to come out and say it...

A lot of these anti-cop tirades are becoming tiresome adolescent posturing.

Okay...yes, we know a good number of them abuse power, much has been made and said about that. Yes, they appear to operate under a black and white/right and wrong mentality that, apparently, is as self serving as it is narrow. Yes, a disturbing percentage of them are racist thuggish pawns in a corrupt urban infrastructure who get their palms greased and shake down the relatively innocent. Yes, they used to beat up on punk rockers back in the day.

Am I a huge, huge fan of the cops and their mentality? No.

Unfortunately, they're almost, at worst, a necessary evil. I mean, we are talking about people who have to babysit the public for not fucking very much money. They work really long, stressful days and have to see shit on a regular basis that would send a lot of us living in our mom's basement, sucking our fingers while staring at the walls.

Think of it this way...if an armed burglar breaks into your house, with you in it, are you gonna go up to him and say, "look man, this is really uncool, I'm just a working man too and I really don't have much..."

Or here...let's rachet the stakes a bit...imagine if somebody, say, rapes your wife, or kills somebody you care deeply about. What? Are you gonna put together a vigilante mob to go get the fuckers? Good luck, I guess, if that's the route you're gonna take but I'm willing to bet you probably wouldn't be too happy with the outcome.

I know some people here get around town on bike. Imagine innocently riding your bike to get where you have to go one moment and waking up in the emergency room the next. Imagine if everyone saw a drunk barreling down the road, towards a cyclist, and just kinda turned their heads and said, "that shit is none of my business."

Look...I've been on the other side of the law too. I've been harrassed, I've been arrested, but I've been helped in times of need too.

I'd almost say, "until you've been hit by a drunk driver, or unless you've lost somebody who has, then shut the fuck up", but I'm not going to. It's all well and good to weigh in, but to make gross generalizations about an unfortunately necessary, and really inevitable, institution, or to bait people who try to do the right thing by saying they'd "break a nail" dialing it in, or to keep harping on a point even after the guy said, repeatedly, "I didn't think they were actually going to drive" is just ignorant and wrongheaded.

I say all of this out of disappointment, to some extent, because I know the people saying these things are by no means dumb. Granted, nobody owes it to me not to be disappointing, and I'm not asking anybody to switch whatever side of this great debate they're on, but think about all of this a bit.

So you're saying we need a police force? Next you'll be saying that everybody dies someday.

I'm obviously out of my element talking about DUI laws with Americans if your policing is that bad when it comes to drunks behind the wheel.

In the UK I'd say it was something our boys in blue should be doing when they're out chasing kids off the park green and smelling 6th formers breath for pot. Put that ruddy light out!

Well...another thing that's a tad disturbing is this whole attitude of, "hey, it's okay to get behind the wheel after I've had a few, I know when I've had enough..."

Yeah, everybody knows when they're just a little buzzed, that's why they keep drinking.

Some of this is almost straight out of a Jack Chick tract.

steve wrote:So you're saying we need a police force? Next you'll be saying that everybody dies someday.

Death and cops. Equally inevitable, equally popular.

The MayorofRockNRoll wrote:

steve wrote:So you're saying we need a police force? Next you'll be saying that everybody dies someday.

Death and cops. Equally inevitable, equally popular.

Sounds like a tagline for a new Terry Pratchett novel.