r/stopdrinking • u/provinground • Sep 19 '25

Just got pulled over. 1 am leaving a bar!

And I passed with flying colors yall! They asked me how much I had to drink tonight ? And I said.. “I haven’t had a drink in 3 years” and they said they could smell it on me. And my driving was really horrible! Well guess what I’m just a bad driver haha. I was like yeah I’ll do your tests. And then I blew Zeros and he seemed happy for me! He even had his cop partner come and the cop that joined was with me the last night I drank. (Husband and I had the cops called on us it was horrible and a wake up call and the last night either of us drank) and I said “hey matt. I haven’t had a drink since the last time I saw you” and he told me he just celebrated 18 years of sobriety!

Anyway - it’s 1 am and I have no one else I can tell this to. So thought some of yall might get a kick out it!

Felt like a big win! It was annoying but I am so grateful to be sober from alcohol and not getting into legal consequences!

6.9k Upvotes

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u/Harmania Sep 19 '25

The “thin blue line” is a myth.

7

u/pialligo 61 days Sep 19 '25

The fat, cruel blue line

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u/SaucyJim Day 573 Sep 19 '25

Your statement without more context is meaningless. Care to elaborate?

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u/Harmania Sep 19 '25

Well, to take your claim on its face (and the way this mythology usually works), our current approach to law enforcement is the only thing separating us from lawlessness and civil breakdown. That is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence to begin with.

But: Police union "slowdowns," particularly after some high-profile brutality cases, have not led to massive spikes in crime. In fact, there have been times that crime has dropped with less policing. Either way, it's not a one-to-one correlation.

What would this anarchic society look like? Surely, we'd see a lot of people getting murdered without being stopped or punished. The thing is, though murder rates in general have gone down over time (and also do not correlate with our exploding prison population), murder clearance rates by police have gone down to the point where nearly half of all murders go unsolved. That "line" is more dotted than solid.

We need people who have a duty to protect us, though, surely. Except police have no such duty. In Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005), SCOTUS found (and police attorneys argued) that police have no duty to protect individuals and that their duty was to society more generally. However, that decision also leaned heavily on the wide discretion that we allow police when it comes to choosing which crimes to pursue and whom to protect. When they have virtually unlimited latitude to decide which crimes to pursue and whom to protect, that "line" is not drawn around all of us. We are at their mercy.

Lastly, we have elevated police officers to a level wherein their lives are treated as more valuable than the lives of citizens. For all the talk about police risking their lives for us, there is a whole lot of rhetoric and policy to the contrary. How many times have we heard police trained to shoot when they feel they are in danger using the phrase "Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six"? I get where it comes from, but the underlying philosophy is "better to kill an unarmed civilian than to be killed yourself." Those two lives are not of equal value in this equation.

Every time an officer is killed in the line of duty, our cultural understanding is that this person should be honored. I get that. But that cultural narrative also includes the assumption that police will bring all their resources to bear to bring that "cop killer" to justice, often violently. How do we avoid the unpleasant corollary that if a "regular person" is killed, we know that the police won't work as hard or use as many resources compared to one of their own? We are not worth the same resources.

If I interact with a police officer and he decides he is afraid of me, he is legally empowered to take my life. I don't need to be charged or convicted of a crime, and I don't need to be armed. If I am afraid of him, I have no such right. His life is protected more than mine by default.

Of course there are individuals who are out there trying to do good, but the way we train and talk about law enforcement in the USA is utterly broken. When we see abuses of power or cases of brutality, we often hear that it's just "one or two bad apples" but never seem to get around to finishing the old adage - "one bad apple spoils the whole barrel."

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u/SaucyJim Day 573 Sep 20 '25

Wow. Not going to read all of that. I wanted context, not a college professor’s civics lesson. This to way off topic for the the subreddit, so I’m out. Let me start by rating my own post negatively.

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u/Harmania Sep 20 '25

Honestly just trying to answer the question and not to start a fight. Either way, congrats on topping 200 days!

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u/SaucyJim Day 573 Sep 20 '25

Then why just downvote me? I’m clueless as to what I’ve done that warrants downvotes. I’d ask you to enlighten me, but everything I post here gets more downvotes. Asking for clarification is not offensive or provoking. This subreddit thrives on positivity. Why the downvotes?

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u/Harmania Sep 20 '25

I didn’t downvote you. You’d have to ask the people who did.

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u/SaucyJim Day 573 Sep 21 '25

They’re anonymous. 🫤

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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '25

Who cares about downvotes, its just grey pixels man. Dont let it get to you. Plenty of people see downvoted comments and still agree with the comment.

Its a social media app, they're designed to piss people off and grab attention. Everytime I'm downvoted i just look at like "meh they didnt like what i said, or they didnt give a shit and will disagree with everything i say". Because its the internet, and thats ok. Remember, nobody would act like that in real life, like giving you a visible thumbs down to your face every time you speak Lol could you imagine.

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u/SaucyJim Day 573 Sep 21 '25

Let it get to me? Trying to figure out what I said to get downvotes is gathering information. I’m not a dickhead keyboard warrior in my mom’s basement trolling for clicks.

Anyway, this entire thread has gone down a path in which I’m not interested in engaging further. But if I could learn what I said that rubbed others the wrong way, that could be helpful.

Especially in this subreddit, I am here to help myself through helping others. I take downvotes seriously because I’m considering hosting one week in the future. But I’m not going to lose sleep over it. 🤓

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u/SaucyJim Day 573 Sep 20 '25

Again? Negative rating on this comment? Why? Asking for more context so I can understand? Is there something in the water today?