The Independent’s schoolteacher/ diarist follows a deadly drunk driver through Westville. She calls the cops. Did she do right?
May 8, 2006 On Saturday night after work, I headed up Chapel Street toward Westville to Dennis’ house. At the end of Chapel, where it intersects with Forest, I came upon an SUV, stopped a significant distance before the stop sign. Thinking I could move around the SUV, I started to move to the right of it. But the car snapped into action and took a right onto Forest. I followed. As I drove behind it, I saw it swerve into the other lane dramatically. It came back into our lane and then swerved again, this time up onto the bank, almost into the light pole. As it came back down to the road, it was met with oncoming traffic, nearly hitting two cars. At this point, I slowed my car way down. I grabbed my cell phone and called the police, alerting them to the fact that I was driving behind someone who was clearly under the influence. The car was driving in the direction I was headed, so I continued to follow it, updating the police with my location. The swerving was scary and my heart raced. But the whole time, I wondered if I was doing the right thing by calling. I figured, as I gripped the phone, that it was my responsibility to report this person, to alert someone of the fact that here was someone who had the ability, in his or her inebriated state, to injure or kill someone. If I didn’t call, I would be allowing this person to get away with dangerous behavior, godforbid something terrible would happen. At my school, we talk about “bystander” behavior — “the kind of behavior people have who overlook bad things when they happen, thereby allowing those bad things to happen. But then I got scared. I thought of my students who talk about “snitching.” I had just snitched on this person. The car kept slowing down and taking turns, and I kept following it. Was the driver attempting to see if I was following him or her? What would happen to me if the driver discovered I was not only following him but on the phone with the cops? Thanks to working in bars and restaurants where I see drunken people all the time, I know the kinds of irrational behaviors they are capable of. I may have been putting myself in danger had I continued to follow this person. I eventually turned onto Fountain Street and continued on to Dennis’, shaking the whole time. In the end, the cops took down the license plate and I gave them the intersection of the last place I’d seen the car. I don’t know if I did A) the right thing or B) enough. Should I have continued to follow that car? Should I have stayed on the phone with the cops until they met up with the car? I have no idea. But I do know, in my state of 100 percent sobriety and concern for myself and for the cars the SUV almost ran into, I had a responsibility to make a call. And then I think to myself, what if the cops pulled that person over and that person got in trouble? I don’t know what the consequences would be for that individual. And to know that I could be the person who could have caused a great deal of trouble for that person and his or her family makes me feel terrible. But I guess I would feel even worse if someone died because I didn’t place a call. This makes me think of how fear causes paralysis. We are so afraid of taking action because we fear that we ourselves may be put in danger if word gets out that we have somehow “snitched” on someone; therefore, we take no action. How did things get to be this way? Wasn’t there ever a time when individuals looked out and tried to protect a community without the fear of retaliation? Why is it, when the cop asked me for my last name, I refused to give it? Was I so afraid that someone would find out who I am and hunt me down and hurt me? Actually, yes. But why? How could I be? And if I thought about that before I placed the call, I might not even have placed the call at all. I would have been scared into inaction. Taking action, any kind of action, is a scary thing. But “yo,” as my kids would say. Listen up. If we don’t take action, things are going to stay the same. And it is not okay to stay the same right now.
Hell yes, you did the right thing. No doubt about it. I've called in (seemingly) drunken drivers on two separate occasions, and both times I wished I had been able to follow through and see the person arrested. Police can't catch every criminal on their own -- they count on community support from people like you.
Don't listen to the kids. In a case like this, snitching is the brave and honorable thing to do.