HereWeGoAgain
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From the Sault Ste. Marie SooToday.com:
Why was the police officer such a jerk?
By Pete Vere
SooToday.com
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Over the past few months there have been several complaints about local police enforcing stunt-driving laws. Several epithets have been used to describe the officers. Because SooToday.com tries to remain somewhat family friendly, the word 'jerk' will substitute for a multitude of vulgarities.
Long before Ontario brought in its new law against stunt driving, I came across a police officer who was a real 'jerk' about pulling the licenses of teenage drivers he caught going way over the speed limit. He wrote an article explaining why he was such a jerk. I tried to google it, but without much luck. Anyway, here's my recollection of what the officer wrote.
As a young police officer, he often found himself assigned to traffic duty on the highway. One night he caught a carload of teenagers doing 40 over the limit along a dangerous stretch of the freeway.
He pulled them over, saw that the driver was newly-licensed, and realized the kid would probably lose his license if the officer enforced the law to its full extent. Then there would be the steep insurance increase once the kid went for licensing again. The young lad pleaded with the officer to cut them a break, and remembering his own youthful foibles, the officer didn't want to be a jerk. So he cut the teens a break, gave them a stern warning and let them go on their way.
Half-an-hour later the officer received another call. There had been an accident a few kilometres down the same stretch of highway. When the officer arrived at the scene, he recognized the vehicle, mangled as it was into a rock cut. What was even more haunting, he said, is that he recognized three of the four teens who were dead on impact. They were the teens he had pulled over half-an-hour previous and let off with a warning.
The officer administered what first aid he could to save the fourth before paramedics arrived and took over. The teen would succumb to his injuries on the way to the hospital. Emergency room doctors pronounced the kid dead on arrival.
"I have lived with that accident every day of my police career," stated the officer. "And I still see their faces smashed into the rock cut."
"Had I been a jerk and pulled the license," he wrote. "They would not have liked me, but they would still be alive today."
From that day forward the officer never failed to charge or ticket reckless drivers, particularly new ones. "I don't like being a jerk," the officer wrote. "However, it could be your child's life that I save."
And if my child was the one stunt driving, I too would hope that the police officer pulls my kid's license, even if my kid grumbled and felt the police officer was a 'jerk'.