More about the Hidden Costs of Alcoholism

I mentioned a few days ago Dan Wolkoff's excellent point with regard to the David Rosenbaum debacle, that so much of the efforts of DC Fire and Emergency Services personnel is expended on alcoholics, that it was all too reasonable for them to assume that this guy sprawled on the ground was an alcoholic, not the victim of a beating resulting in a head injury. Today's papers have stories about the Fire Department moving to discipline or fire various personnel involved in this incident. (See The "recent" failures of the DC Fire Department are indicative of much deeper systems failures than people realize.")

It's ironic in a way, because the Ottawa (Ontario) Citizen has a story about a very similar situation, an incident where the police officers waived off the paramedics, and sent the guy that they found sprawled in the parking lot, seemingly drunk, up to his apartment to "sleep it off." He was found dead 17 hours later, again likely due to a head injury. (I can't find the article now, because the Canada.Com search engine is so s****, something I've discovered over the years, every time I try to find something. This is the equivalent of Gannett Newspapers having one master website for all their newspapers across the country, forcing you to use the master site, and then offering the most pathetic search capabilities for the individual newspapers. Fortunately, most e-newspapers do a much better job.)

I found this story because, speaking of drunkenness, it's a cause celebre in Canada about celebrants on Canada Day (July 1st, Canada's equivalent of the U.S.'s Independence Day) extending their celebration by urinating on the National War Memorial in Ottawa. See for example, "Police identify young trio who urinated on monument," and "'A national disgrace'."
A man is seen relieving himself on the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Saturday July 1, 2006. (CP / Michael Pilon)

I have been re-reading Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point and the discussion about the effectiveness of cracking down on quality-of-life crimes as a way to reduce criminality overall. Last fall, Gladwell wrote about the kind of initiatives discussed in this article, "Homeless Alcoholics Receive a Permanent Place to Live, and Drink," from yesterday's New York Times, which I discussed in this blog entry from February: Some more thoughts about trying to institute problem-oriented policing in DC."

The Examiner has run some stories about the problems that Chief Ramsey has been having, and it is believed that he won't be retained by the next Mayor. See The battle over ‘redeployment’ and D.C. police deployment under fire.

I have come around on Chief Ramsey. While I do believe there are some issues, big ones, in terms of civil rights and demonstrations, he has been working diligently to right the department towards fundamental public safety problems.

I found it interesting that yesterday's Examiner has a story about a rise in murders in the Capitol Hill East area of the city, "Hill East residents struggle with rise in homicides," but mentions almost in passing that almost all other crime indicators show a reduction in crime for that area.

Like many of the problems with schooling in the city, something that despite my best efforts to not get involved, I can't help but write about it because the quality of discourse on the subject is pretty middling (and it will likely to be so even if Robert Bobb runs for the School Board Presidency, see Harry Jaffe's column "A glimmer of hope for District schools," this is the same guy who was the main cheerleader for the National Capital Medical Center--see the City Paper Loose Lips column "Alone in the Dark"--which is/was an unsound idea)--people are ignoring many aspects of the problem, including addressing the children and parents "inputs" side of the equation.

It is the inputs side of the murder equation--the propensity of violence amongst people likely to commit murders, access to weapons, and a willingness to kill--that needs to be addressed. And while the Police Department is part of the response, it's not the only part of it, and perhaps is not the most important part of the response either.

Index Keywords: emergency-services