Ren Allen

"He passed by and saw Joshua crying a little, as I undertstand it
(third hand)
and said something like "Stop crying, boy," and connected it with some
short
comment to the earlier accident which that same cop had been dealing
with at
the time, and assumed Josh had been driving this time too."

He's not going to have much affect on stopping the behavior by telling
the poor kid not to cry! Sheesh. I hate boys being treated like they
shouldn't cry.
The fact that he was crying shows he was concerned about what happened
and felt badly. I know the cops see a lot of crap, but I think he was
wrong.
Yeah, Josh needs to realize how very serious his behavior is...but
things like this happned in my life, to people that were CRAZY in HS,
but were never alcoholics.

Ren

[email protected]

The purpose of my last post was to point out that even young adults can be
in situations that they know nothing about how to handle or are not able to
for a variety of physical reasons.

The police are not always going to be helpful and kind and about "teaching
lessons" or anything else.

Yes, kids that survive accidents probably know how lucky they are,
especially with all the media attention when a young person dies tragically in a car
accident.

Sure the under age boy should have known it was wrong to be riding after
midnight in a car with an even younger driver breaking all kinds of rules and
laws but I'm sure he was scared (the crying) and maybe hurt in some way and he's
a kid. I think he deserves some amount of care and concern and sympathy
just for the circumstances. There is time to have a discussion about his
implication in the matter. After all the immediateness of the accident is
attended too.

Just like in my son's case, had the officer sought medical treatment for my
obviously injured son or allowed him to even get care before three hours had
gone by, I think my sons and myself would not have such bad thoughts about
police and their goals.

Mistakes are made, by teenagers, young adults and even trusted to protect
and serve state troopers.

My son wasn't a known drug user or abuser and has no prior tickets or
anything, so this officer had no reason other than my son being 21 and it being
midnight to behave like he did. He could have just impounded the car and had it
gone over later but HE wanted to make the big bust if there was one to make.
Even the car my son drove, a 95 Park Avenue (grandma car they call it) that
he had inherited from us wouldn't have made him think this was a big time
drug dealer with drugs hid in the headliner of the car and elsewhere. BUT he
HOPED.

Had my son died from a more serious head injury that had been long delayed
it would have been a tragic mistake this trooper would live with forever.
Lucky for him it didn't happen that way.

Lucky for my son he lived after slamming into that tree and not wearing a
seatbelt.

Lucky for the nephew his heart is still soft enough to cry during a scary,
glad we are all ok situation.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/26/05 12:31:49 PM, starsuncloud@... writes:


> The fact that he was crying shows he was concerned about what happened
> and felt badly.
>

Or that he was afraid, or that he was in pain.

Had there been an innocent person killed instead of that girl just rolling a
car full of her also-drunken friends down a little dirt embankment, then THAT
would have been something to cry about for life.

My sympathy was not with Joshua, even though I like him when he's sober.
He's too young yet to have ruined anyone else's life, and I hope SOMETHING will
inspire him to take steps now to avoid doing that. (What I wrote just now
isn't true, though, is it? He IS old enough to ruin other people's lives. He
needs to stop taking that risk.) If a cop knows who you are in the
emergency room because he dealt with you in ANOTHER accident, I think he easily has
the right to make a comment. Joshua's dad argued to get him off the charges
the time before instead of letting him accept the consequences. He didn't even
lose his license.

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Betsy Hill

**Joshua's dad argued to get him off the charges
the time before instead of letting him accept the consequences. He
didn't even
lose his license.**

OK, for that I would take the dad outside and give him a talking to
guaranteed to make him cry.

(Easy for me to see in hindsight.)

But, yeah, driving has serious consequences and anyone who doesn't
understand that drunken driving has even more serious consequences need
to walk or ride the bus or stay home, IMNSHO.

Betsy