How many times can a woman who is over fifty years old be punched in the face and still keep functioning? How many times do you think she could have her hair pulled out and still keep functioning? How many times do you think she could be bitten as hard as the human mouth can bite and still keep functioning?
You might be surprised by the answer. I know I was. But eventually it caught up with her. She is out on medical leave and I don’t think she will ever come back.
Things like this are always in the back of my mind when I read articles like the one that I linked to yesterday. It’s people like her that make a farce out of all the rules and regulations that are supposed to govern how the “difficult” wards of the state are handled.
Do you think you are a moral law abiding person? Do you think you would obey the laws that govern how the use of force is used on wards of the state? Do you think you would turn a blind eye to people who routinely flouted those laws? After all, it is abuse, right?
Now tell me, oh moral person, would you turn the aforementioned over fifty year old woman in for using illegal methods to bring a 200 pound violent male under control? What if he punched her in the face before the whole thing went down?
If you would not turn her in, where would you draw the line? Would you turn her in if she was only forty five years old? Would you turn the guy in who came rushing to save her? I mean, he saw her losing badly and he took drastic action to get the “ward of the state” off her quick. But that drastic action was illegal and you are not going to tolerate any illegal treatment of the wards of state, right?
You think that those question are all easy to answer, do you? Well, here is the really tricky one. You have a bunch of people who have all done illegal things to wards of the state. But you feel that most of them only do illegal things when they have no other choice. But you feel that a couple of them are real jerks who go out off their way to do abusive things.
How do you rat out those two abusive jerks without having them rat out everyone else and get everyone in trouble?
[…] This week’s rant of the week is “A Hard Problem.” […]