Facebook Lands Drunk Driving Teen In Jail 443
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that 18-year-old Jacob Cox-Brown has been arrested after telling his Facebook network that he had hit a car while driving drunk, posting the message: 'Drivin drunk ... classsic ;) but to whoever's vehicle i hit i am sorry. :P' Two of Cox-Brown's friends saw the message and sent it along to two separate local police officers and after receiving the tip, police went to Cox-Brown's house and were able to match a vehicle there to one that had hit two others in the early hours of the morning. Police then charged the teen with two counts of failing to perform the duties of a driver. 'Astoria Police have an active social media presence,' says a press release from Astoria Police. 'It was a private Facebook message to one of our officers that got this case moving, though. When you post ... on Facebook, you have to figure that it is not going to stay private long.'"
How is this gasping news (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the price you pay for being immature.
You know you have done something wrong (1.drive drunk 2.smash a car and the incident is the effect of a cause that is you alone, in wrongdoing). You look around, make sure noone sees you and when this turns out to be positive, you keep your fucking mouth shut. QED.
eCrimes division (Score:5, Insightful)
Treating this story as news in this day and age smacks of the "Same old crime.... but on a COMPUTER!!!" syndrome that we've been criticising for a decade or more.
Upside Down World (Score:2, Insightful)
Skating, smoking weed & playing video games is evil and dangerous, but
smoking cigarettes, owning guns & drinking and driving is cool, safe and "classic".
Freaking idiots!
Re:eCrimes division (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nice friends (Score:5, Insightful)
If you get to know about a crime and do not report it, you automatically become an accomplice. He basically forced them to report him.
Idiot x2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nice friends (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you wait until your friend kills someone before you do the right thing?
Re:Social Snitching. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some poor guy's car get wrecked up by an asshole and you are only worried protecting the asshole from paying the consequences? Snitching is absolutely and completely ethical if you are reporting an immoral or unethical act. If an asshole has hurt another person, then you have a duty to snitch. The case where snitching is unethical is when you report a 'crime' that hurts nobody (drug use is a good example).
Re:Social Snitching. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Upside Down World (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:5, Insightful)
Or if you're a real man, you leave your number under his windshield wiper, fess up (to the hit, not the drinking) and pay for the damage.
Then you stop being a murderous punk-ass little bitch who'd drink and then handle a giant steel lethal weapon.
Re:Not FB (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nice friends (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides which, "friends" means something completely different on Facebook.
In the real world, they're people that would slap you in the face for being a dangerous shithead. On facebook, they're often just people that were in the same yearbook as you, once upon a time.
Re:Social Snitching. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're doing him a favour - if he stops drink driving, he's much less likely to end up in a body bag, or worse, maimed or in jail.
Re:Nice friends (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:5, Insightful)
How does being "a real man" entitle you to "ignore" the far more serious crime of drunk driving?
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:5, Insightful)
The news is even inaccurate... Facebook didn't land him in jail, being a moron and driving drunk, then not stopping at the scene of an accident did.
Re:Nice friends (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Social Snitching. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice friends (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if my friends kill someone, I'll still support them.
That's what true friendship is about.
Being drunk behind the wheel of a car is a dangerous thing to be doing. If it was my friend i'd be dobbing them in too, for their safety and the safety of my other friends (and family, and strangers). I would be giving them the chance to turn themselves in first, but they'd need to be quick. That's the sort of support they need, even if it isn't what they want.
In any case, a true friend wouldn't put me in the position where I had to make such a choice.
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Tell people about a crime you committed.
2. Get caught.
Glad that still works.
Re:Nice friends (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:5, Insightful)
That'd be the "Then you stop..." part.
It's called learning from mistakes. If nobody's hurt and you paid for the damages then there's no point in getting a criminal record if you've learned your lesson and aren't going to do it again.
Re:Upside Down World (Score:5, Insightful)
Driving drunk is ALWAYS wrong. 99% of gun owners do absolutely nothing wrong with their guns.
Re:Upside Down World (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:3, Insightful)
You look around, make sure noone sees you and when this turns out to be positive, you keep your fucking mouth shut
And that makes you better, how exactly? Sounds you're as much of a dipshit as the guy in the article.
Re:Upside Down World (Score:5, Insightful)
In many parts of the world, those 99% of gun owners do something wrong with their gun: owning it. (yes, in many parts of the world gun ownership itself is forbidden, except very few specific exceptions...)
No... they do something illegal. Being illegal doesn't make something wrong. In many parts of the world owning a bible is illegal.
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:5, Insightful)
Except it's unlikely that you would learn your lesson if you get off so lightly. That is why DUI penalties are so harsh, so that you don't easily forget.
Punishment is not the cause of good judgment. Doing things just to avoid punishment is the very opposite of having your own judgment.
Think about it for a minute and it will dawn on you just how simple that really is. Punishments are for people who for whatever reason, fail to develop their own good judgment. They cannot control themselves internally so we make laws to control them externally.
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes and someone who drives while intoxicated is surely a model of self control....
I mean it's not like they didn't know that driving under the influence is a stupid thing to do before they did it. Punishment gives a person time and an immediate motivation to really think about what they did. Punishment and the ability judge situations for yourself are not mutually exclusive.
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called learning from mistakes.
Drunk driving is not a "mistake". You chose to get drunk. You chose to drive. You know it's wrong. You know it's dangerous. You know you may kill someone. You choose to do it anyway. That's not a "mistake", that's wilful culpable recklessness.
there's no point in getting a criminal record if you've learned your lesson and aren't going to do it again.
"if" being the keyword. How do we know you've learned your lesson? Only you know for sure, and you're a dangerous idiot, so who's going to believe a word you say? The point of getting a criminal record is that if you've a habit of not learning your lesson, then someone ought to be keeping track of just how much more of a lesson you need, before it gets through your thick skull.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because unless they are mentally retarded, they know, without question, that alcohol and drugs affects their mind and motor skills before ever consuming any and before ever climbing into the driver's seat.
They probably know it affects their mind and motor skills, but to what degree do they think it will affect their ability to drive? At any rate, I highly doubt they intended to harm anyone, so I would indeed say it's a mistake on their part. That doesn't at all mean I think they should be let off, though.
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:2, Insightful)
Driving while intoxicated most certainly *is* criminal. This is for multiple reasons. One is that because of the impairment factor, the intoxicated person is not in a viable state to assess whether or not they can operate the vehicle without becoming a danger to themselves or others. Therefore they should not be driving at all.
Two: the probability of causing property or personal damage to others is so much higher than that of a person who is sober--and let us be perfectly honest; the probability of causing serious damage while operating a multi-ton vehicle is already quite high. Things like driving while intoxicated, texting while driving, etc, just simply aren't needed as they take an already dangerous activity and make it much much more dangerous.
Three: because of the masses involved any accident that does happen is very likely to be lethal to the victims, whereas the perpetrator is likely to be safe because of their relaxed condition and the safety cage they are driving around.
No being drunk isn't criminal, but doing highly dangerous stuff that is *very* likely to hurt others IS. Yes it is *possible* to drive while intoxicated and not hurt anyone or anything, but it's hardly the probable outcome. Solid research on the topic makes this very clear. Look up the citations yourself.
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:5, Insightful)
By the same logic shooting blindly at random directions should also be legal, because you don't necessarily hit anyone. In fact, ignoring any and all traffic laws or simply driving with your eyes closed should be just fine because you don't necessarily hit anyone.
Reckless endangerment of other people is a crime, and should be a crime because otherwise those other people have little choice but to go vigilante in the name of self-protection.
Libertarianism is about the freedom to commit financial homicide, not ethanol assisted vehicular homicide.
Re:Nice friends (Score:4, Insightful)
And as a result, these cultures tend to pretty violent and horrible places to live - after all, they still need to settle disputes and keep the members in line. The Mafia is a good example. So are honour killings. Stoning rape victims to death is also a great manifestation of these noble, straight-backed cultures, where justice is whatever the guy with the biggest gang of thugs says it is.
The rule of law is a good thing, even if every law is not good, because the only alternative is tyranny. And the laws against drunk driving happen to be amongst the good ones.
Re:Nice friends (Score:2, Insightful)
The rule of law and flawed individuals given near infinite power (aka the police) are two different things.
Lots of people do not trust them, and they have many logical reasons not to.
And anarchy is different than the understanding that you just do not rat to the police.
Everyone does something illegal once in a while, reasonable people do not go running to the police everything they see a minor offence.
Getting neighbor to rat on neighbor is the first sign of fascism. It happened in Germany, and it happened in Babylon 5; To name a few.
Re:How is this gasping news (Score:3, Insightful)
"Hey, it's me. I'm leaving the store at the corner of somewhere and otherwhere now, I'll be home in twenty." End call, get in car, drive, get smashed into. You are making a LOT of assumptions about what happened.
Re:Nice friends (Score:4, Insightful)
In the real world, they're people that would slap you in the face for being a dangerous shithead
Actually, I'm constantly amazed at how many people will just sit back, mute, and allow their "friends" to wander off on some self-destructive path.
I've found that most people are more concerned with the friendship than with the friend.