People Are No Damn Good

Here’s an etiquette quiz:

Imagine you have been drinking alcoholic beverages and smoking a joint with two of your friends. Imagine further that you notice a woman stumbling along the street carrying some wood laminate flooring material. The woman in question then collapses in a doorway and doesn’t get up. Imagine that you rush to her side and use your only first aid knowledge, presumably learned from viewing Three Stooges movies, and douse her with water to revive her. Imagine that she doesn’t stir after being drenched.

Do you:

A) call 911 (or the equivalent)

B) ask your friends if they have more first aid knowledge and attempt to render further aid

C) comment to your friends that drunk folks shouldn’t attempt to carry around flooring materials and laugh heartily at her misfortune

D) shout to your friends “this is a YouTube moment,” and, while one of them captures the moment on his cellphone camera, urinate on the woman then spray shaving cream on her

If you picked D, then – ding, ding, ding – you are a complete fuckwit named Anthony Anderson of Hartlepool, England. The woman in question was not drunk but had numerous health issues and died at the scene of pancreatic failure.

He pissed on a dying woman while shouting for his friends to tape him.
Read the BBC story if you think I’m kidding.

This is an extreme example but it illustrates an alarming lack of decency.

Guess what? You shouldn’t victimize people, even drunk folks.

Officers and dispatches alike get irritated by the number of times officers have to run lights and sirens to a drunk person down and not moving. But the one time in a hundred that it’s a legitimate problem is worth the risk of running code. And even if the person is ‘just drunk’ they need assistance if they are incapacitated if only so they are not victimized. Passed-out folks get beaten, robbed, raped, and killed. It happens.

I had to explain to a recruit long ago that you were not allowed to have sex with someone too intoxicated to say ‘no.’ It doesn’t matter if black-out drunk sex is your favorite kind or if that’s how your momma met your daddy, it’s still illegal. It’s similar to not being allowed to have sex with someone too young to consent or something who cannot consent (such as an animal).

You may substitute “urinate on” with “have sex” and the same rules apply.

The fact that this needs to be explained to folks saddens me.