Respectfully, that is not what he said. That is how you interpret the point you believe he is trying to make. When in doubt, I try real hard to read only the words on the page. I think if you do that, the only way to get to where you want to go is by assuming the guy is either incompetent or acting in bad faith.
I have never said anything remotely like the position you ascribe to me.
Nor do I, and for the life of me I can’t get how you assume the supposed cop does either. The point as I understand it is that it is unprovable that a specific woman who voluntarily takes ambien (whether via prescription or not) was “roofied” on a particular night. I would go further and say that based upon what I believe to be a fair reading of the guy’s narrative, a woman like those he describes would most probably truthfully answer “I don’t remember” when asked whether she took her daily prescribed dose of ambien on the day of the incident. At that point, the cop has literally no where to go with a theory that there was an intentional drugging.
@jonri: As I understood the article, the point wasn’t that no women are sexually assaulted after intoxication by ambien. Rather, since many or all of those whose cases this alleged detective investigated involved alleged victims who either a) had prescriptions for ambien, or b) had a history of taking ambien recreationally, there’s no way to prove it was an involuntary intoxication. Since police investigations literally exist for the purpose of developing a provable case (they do not exist to provide “closure”), and since that cannot be accomplished, the cases dead end. The author is trying to explain why, given his (alleged) experience, so few sexual assault cases go to trial.
If Ambien is in a woman’s system and she doesn’t have a prescription and the guy does, that isn’t absolute proof the guy gave it to her without her knowledge but that is a piece of the puzzle.
@dstark: Absolutely, but that wasn’t what the author talked about. The author said the alleged victims generally fell into two groups. The first had ambien prescriptions, the second had a history of taking ambien prior to going out drinking (regardless of whether they had a prescription). If an alleged victim had neither of those, then turning up testing positive is indeed something to investigate. The author’s point is that we shouldn’t blame police for not being able to make triable cases when, at least in the case of ambien, so many people fall into groups 1 and 2.
@momofthreeboys - odd thing, to drink vodka because it has less calories. It really doesn’t.
The lowest-calorie beers are light beers, which contain, on average, around 100 calories in every 12 ounces. Dark beers like ales are the next best when it comes to the calorie count, ranging between 125 and 145 calories per glass.
A 4 oz glass of dry white wine has an average of just 77 calories.
100-proof vodka has the highest calorie concentration with 124 calories in a 1.5-ounce jigger. And that’s not counting mixers.
“I’m most curious why Ambien is so commonly prescribed to young healthy people”
It’s not unusual for generally healthy people to have insomnia. But prescription drugs are also widely shared. A person can take it voluntarily without having a prescription.
Re elementary-aged children committing sexual assault, I did work on an unspeakably tragic custody case where two children who had been raped at home were sexually harassing and attacking other children in their foster placement. But I hope and believe that that situation is rare.
The flavored vodkas are the girl favorites I hear. or about 1/2 the calories per shot of a can of cheap beer they might get at a party. Plus it’s easy to hide a flask…not so easy to hide cans of beer. #3 says girls say that beer makes them “bloaty.” I rarely drink beer and when I do, not enough to know I guess what “bloaty” means LOL. Anyway, I only know what I get told by the guys…and this from the Chicago Trib:
I don’t find college girls drinking vodka instead of beer odd at all and I tend to believe my son when he tells me it is the girls’ ‘drink of choice’ in his crowd. Again, maybe girls and Ambien and Vodka are a midwest thing…who knows. where this detective was from.
LOL, #3 just walked in the door from work and I asked him (again) why girls drink vodka. He says “Mom that’s just the way it is. Girls drink vodka, Guys drink beer. it’s an image thing. A calorie thing. A bloaty thing. But I think girls like to drink beer most of them just won’t.” And that is a direct quote from a soon to be college senior on a Big 10 campus.
@dstark: I have a hard time seeing how its fair to castigate the author for hyperbole he clearly and explicitly acknowledges is hyperbole. As to narrative, of course he does. He’s an author. Having a narrative is literally in the job description.
His point is that we shouldn’t blame him for not closing more sex assault cases because sex assault cases commonly come with bad facts that make them very hard to prove. You may think that he’s wrong or that he should do something different, but it’s not reasonable to be upset that he wrote with a point at all.
OH Mom – your math omits the alcohol content, which is very important if you are drinking to get wasted.
96 calories for a 1.5 ounce shot of 80 proof vodka which delivers 0.6 ounces of alcohol to your system.
121 calories for a 5.2 ounce glass of white wine which (at 20 proof) delivers 0.52 ounces of alcohol to your system.
145 calories for 12 ounce can of 5% beer which delivers 0.6 ounces of alcohol to your system.
A handle of 80 proof vodka is the tool of choice to get hammered. For the dose of alcohol, it is cheap, compact size and least expensive.
It also is the fastest acting and most easy to over-consume. Which makes it the most dangerous. Which is why you’d rather have the youngsters drinking beer or wine instead.
@Demosthenes49, it is extremely difficult to get a conviction in most rape cases. Even with improvements in our justice system, it is going to be extremely difficult to get a conviction in most rape cases.
Too much hyperbole in that post.
Attitude is very important. If an investigator thinks most or everybody is on drugs, and a victim says she was drugged, the victim is already behind the eight ball.
The author is belittling victims of date rape by the way he talks about Ambien and what he doesn’t say.
Tonight, If Steph Curry has a bad attitude and doesn’t think he is going to make his shots, he won’t make his shots. The warriors are probably going to lose.
If the author thinks he won’t be able to build case to get a rape conviction, he won’t. His attitude is self fulfilling.
@dstark: I agree that it’s difficult to get convictions in sexual assault cases. I am honestly unsure about the best way to improve the system, though I am open to proposals.
I’m not sure it’s a fair reading to say that the author goes in thinking everyone is on drugs and with a defeatist attitude. The author is pretty clearly frustrated about not being able to close cases and would very much like to. It’s not the author’s fault that his cases come with the facts they have.
It’s also not clear how any attitude change would affect the bad facts. If a person says “I was dosed with ambien” but also that they have a history of taking ambien before going out drinking, no attitude adjustment on the part of police will change that.
Echoing a bit of what @Demosthenes49 said, I work with a number of lawyers currently, both male and female, who have spent large chunks of time working rape and sexual assault cases in state courts. All of them have expressed frustration with the process at one time or another. But by that they mean things like better victim support through the process, or educational outreach about drugs, alcohol,etc. I have never heard any of them talk about changing definitions or relaxing evidence standards. I think that is because most lawyers appreciate that the real problems lie in the interactions themselves, and by relaxing standards or changing definitions you are really just exchanging one set of problems for another.
I agree that many people - maybe more women - drink vodka. Just saying doing so for calorie reasons doesn’t make much sense, even taking into account the small differences in alcohol per calorie in northwesty’s post.
Perhaps college students are not aware of the very small difference in calories “per alcoholic unit” in beer, wine and vodka. That they often mix vodka with things that add lots of calories makes even less sense from that standpoint.
Of course the ability to carry a flask or whatever matters.
