Roughly $2.5 million dollars to get this guy sober. Tax money, well, spent.

[Josh Oakley]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/11/19/1913136/cecils-story-man-who-cost-tacoma.html#storylink=omni_popular

dRead the story. Part of me is happy the guy is sober. Part of me is appalled at the price tag.

 

[Dirty Dog]

That's not really all that much. I could point to at least a dozen of our local homeless alcoholics who have at least that much in unpaid bills.

 

[Josh Oakley]

That's not really all that much. I could point to at least a dozen of our local homeless alcoholics who have at least that much in unpaid bills.

Doesn't mean I want to pay their pills myself or put it on the taxpayers.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Part of my disgust is because I have in the past watched drugs destroy a couple of really good friends. One was close enough to me she may as well have been my sister. Now after ten years of using and selling meth, she is a shell of her former self, and even though she's off the drug, it dominates her thoughts. I can't even pity her because she did it all to her self.

Consequently, I don't pity this guy either. He was a scumbag and now is not. that is good. But I expect a return on investment. I say he now owes the people of the country $2.5 million. Paid by public service, anti-drug activism, free paintings, whatever.

 

[Dirty Dog]

Doesn't mean I want to pay their pills myself or put it on the taxpayers.

That's fine. As soon as you get the law changed so we're not required to give away free medical care, let me know, OK?

 

[MA-Caver]

For me I estimate the cost of getting ME sober is probably a total of 10,000 give or take. I first started out in a halfway house and was there for about 90+ days then was out on my own for the next 24 years. Texas Dept. Of Corrections/Probation footed the bill, I believe since it was they who put me in the halfway house.
$2.5 million? Someone, is getting hog-tied and bent over the fence and there's not a jar of Vaseline in sight... and dats a fact Jack!

 

[jks9199]

Note that the figure here is the total cost over his life span. The cost of police, ambulance and other emergency response to deal with him, the cost of treatment when he was too drunk to go jail, the cost of putting him up in the gray bar hotel, and so on. Over some 30 or so years. They didn't pop him into some place like the Betty Ford Center, with concierge services, and so on.

Let me do a quick guestimate on a typical drunk call for me. My salary & benefits -- let's say $50 total costs for me, per hour. Figure about an hour, hour and a half on average, if the jail's not backed up. Figure the magistrate is probably a third over that, say $75. But he's only involved for about 15 minutes -- so we'll make that figure about $20 (I know, blame it on rounding.) Add a couple deputies time -- let's figure they're the same cost as me. One booking, on supervising till he's sober -- let's round that into about $400 total. Add the $5 baloney sandwich lunch bag. Figure the dispatcher, my back-up officer, vehicle costs all get covered by the rounding in my numbers. So... We're at around $600 or so for a drunk. And that's an actual lock-up. I figure the numbers will be similar if it's diversion to an alcohol treatment facility, just different divvy. Some of our frequent fliers get themselves into a situation for a lockup around once a week, figure 45 times a year, (give 'em a few times that they get sent home or go to the hospital or otherwise avoid police encounters... or the cop just doesn't feel like dealing with them and takes them home.) So, we're looking at roughly $27000 a year. And that's not even counting medical treatment, homeless shelters, and other costs along the way. Or unpaid bar tabs...

I can see this adding up pretty fast. And I just made up the numbers; I think they're reasonably justifiable, probably reasonable over the course of the year.

 

[billc]

Give me half that much and I promise not to become an addict. I figure you are ahead of the game then.

 

[MA-Caver]

Note that the figure here is the total cost over his life span. The cost of police, ambulance and other emergency response to deal with him, the cost of treatment when he was too drunk to go jail, the cost of putting him up in the gray bar hotel, and so on. Over some 30 or so years. They didn't pop him into some place like the Betty Ford Center, with concierge services, and so on.

Let me do a quick guestimate on a typical drunk call for me. My salary & benefits -- let's say $50 total costs for me, per hour. Figure about an hour, hour and a half on average, if the jail's not backed up. Figure the magistrate is probably a third over that, say $75. But he's only involved for about 15 minutes -- so we'll make that figure about $20 (I know, blame it on rounding.) Add a couple deputies time -- let's figure they're the same cost as me. One booking, on supervising till he's sober -- let's round that into about $400 total. Add the $5 baloney sandwich lunch bag. Figure the dispatcher, my back-up officer, vehicle costs all get covered by the rounding in my numbers. So... We're at around $600 or so for a drunk. And that's an actual lock-up. I figure the numbers will be similar if it's diversion to an alcohol treatment facility, just different divvy. Some of our frequent fliers get themselves into a situation for a lockup around once a week, figure 45 times a year, (give 'em a few times that they get sent home or go to the hospital or otherwise avoid police encounters... or the cop just doesn't feel like dealing with them and takes them home.) So, we're looking at roughly $27000 a year. And that's not even counting medical treatment, homeless shelters, and other costs along the way. Or unpaid bar tabs...

I can see this adding up pretty fast. And I just made up the numbers; I think they're reasonably justifiable, probably reasonable over the course of the year.

Heh... of all the years that I was drinking AND using drugs (mainly marijuana) before I went clean and sober... I never gotten a DUI, never been arrested for drunk and disorderly, never been busted for drugs, never even been questioned about either, never been involved with a crime related to either... hell, never even got thrown out of a bar. I was just a quiet drunk/user that bothered nobody and didn't drive around or walk around... well that's not true... some walks I've had while under influence were kinda fun... but not so much that a cop said, "excuse me sir, come over here please? Have you been drinking tonight?"
So either way... the only time I might have cost any problems with authority figures/groups is when my probation officer caught me with a bit of paraphernalia and sent me to the half way house and I had to give a urine sample each month for 9 months until my probation was over with-- successfully they said.
So this guy obviously was a "problem child" and should've been taken care of long before his tab exceeded the six figure mark.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Note that the figure here is the total cost over his life span. The cost of police, ambulance and other emergency response to deal with him, the cost of treatment when he was too drunk to go jail, the cost of putting him up in the gray bar hotel, and so on. Over some 30 or so years. Tohey didn't pop him into some place like the Betty Ford Center, with concierge services, and so on. Let me do a quick guestimate on a typical drunk call for me. My salary & benefits -- let's say $50 total costs for me, per hour. Figure about an hour, hour and a half on average, if the jail's not backed up. Figure the magistrate is probably a third over that, say $75. But he's only involved for about 15 minutes -- so we'll make that figure about $20 (I know, blame it on rounding.) Add a couple deputies time -- let's figure they're the same cost as me. One booking, on supervising till he's sober -- let's round that into about $400 total. Add the $5 baloney sandwich lunch bag. Figure the dispatcher, my back-up officer, vehicle costs all get covered by the rounding in my numbers. So... We're at around $600 or so for a drunk. And that's an actual lock-up. I figure the numbers will be similar if it's diversion to an alcohol treatment facility, just different divvy. Some of our frequent fliers get themselves into a situation for a lockup around once a week, figure 45 times a year, (give 'em a few times that they get sent home or go to the hospital or otherwise avoid police encounters... or the cop just doesn't feel like dealing with them and takes them home.) So, we're looking at roughly $27000 a year. And that's not even counting medical treatment, homeless shelters, and other costs along the way. Or unpaid bar tabs...I can see this adding up pretty fast. And I just made up the numbers; I think they're reasonably justifiable, probably reasonable over the course of the year.

The problem with made up numbers: they're made up. All due respect, your last post didn't establish anything. It is conjecture.Now if you show it in real numbers, then it is interesting.

 

[billc]

As everyone knows who reads my posts I am always a little hesitant to comment on the threads, but let's be real. Jks9199 isn't going to waste valuable life minutes to actually run the exact numbers on the exact amount that this guy rings up each time he is popped for a drunk and disorderly or a DUI. This is a political and or other topic area on a martial arts forum. If this were a social science forum where a formal discussion of the issue is taking place, sure, gig him then. Since it is, I repeat, a martial arts forum with a political/current events thread, let's keep that in mind. I always see this as a place where people would hang out, just like after a martial arts class, and have informal discussions about politics/current events. Some posters get a little obsesssed with details that just aren't that important on, I repeat, a martial arts forum with a political/current events thread. No offense to any of those posters, just a mention that this is a place to hash out topics on an informal level, for the fun of informal debate. Now move along, nothing to see here.

 

[Josh Oakley]

As everyone knows who reads my posts I am always a little hesitant to comment on the threads, but let's be real. Jks9199 isn't going to waste valuable life minutes to actually run the exact numbers on the exact amount that this guy rings up each time he is popped for a drunk and disorderly or a DUI. This is a political and or other topic area on a martial arts forum. If this were a social science forum where a formal discussion of the issue is taking place, sure, gig him then. Since it is, I repeat, a martial arts forum with a political/current events thread, let's keep that in mind. I always see this as a place where people would hang out, just like after a martial arts class, and have informal discussions about politics/current events. Some posters get a little obsesssed with details that just aren't that important on, I repeat, a martial arts forum with a political/current events thread. No offense to any of those posters, just a mention that this is a place to hash out topics on an informal level, for the fun of informal debate. Now move along, nothing to see here.

Strikes me as a personal attack. Regardless, let's not allow ourselves to lower our standards of scholarship for one another, eh? Just like lowered standards in our martial arts are unacceptable, the same is true for our minds. And for the record, his doesn't normally meet the standard for his posts. He exceeds it.

 

[MA-Caver]

Strikes me as a personal attack. Regardless, let's not allow ourselves to lower our standards of scholarship for one another, eh? Just like lowered standards in our martial arts are unacceptable, the same is true for our minds. And for the record, his doesn't normally meet the standard for his posts. He exceeds it.

Josh it's not a personal attack. Trust me, I've been a member of Martial Talk for a long time and I've seen some horrendous personal attacks and some that were quite subtle but none-the-less still violating posting policy.
We are indeed an informal forum when discussing things outside the realm of Martial Arts. None of us are rocket surgeons or brain scientists but we do have some mighty educated folks here, yet they're not going worry about precision unless it is specified. JKS did admit it : " And I just made up the numbers; I think they're reasonably justifiable, probably reasonable over the course of the year." So we know it's just a rough estimate based on his extensive experience as a law enforcement officer... read: cop/police. I can probably do the same thing if we were talking about the cost of going to visit a cave that's been vandalized and cleaning it up. I won't have exact precise numbers but more-n-likely I'll be close enough for government work. :wink1:

However, if you still feel personally jumped on, there is that little triangle with the exclamation point in it which is designed to bring it (the specific post) to the mods attention and they can review and decide if you were attacked or no and take suitable actions.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I've been thinking about this thread since last night. I think I'm ready to comment on it.

First, I have to get past the idea of one example, using one guy. The issue isn't one guy. I think we can all agree that our social services (local, state, federal, and private funds) do not pay this kind of money per person. So he is an extreme 'outlier' on the curve of money spent on similar services. To take this one case as exemplary of what's right or what's wrong with our social services model would be like taking the case of a person needing an organ transplant as typical of the costs of health care for insurance purposes. We don't all get organ transplants, obviously.

Given that, the question then is not really how much we as a society spent on this guy, but how much we spend on average; and how much we can afford to spend, and how much we want to spend. And there are so many factors in that, I'm not sure we can even have the discussion in a forum like this.

For example:

Should we help people at all? Some see it as a moral obligation on society. Some see it as a cost-benefit analysis (does it cost society more to help or not to help?).

If we help, is there a limit to the conditions we assist with?

Is there a dollar limit on how much we'll spend to help one person?

If we refuse to give assistance to someone who then harms others, is there any responsibility there for society beyond that of the individual his or herself?

I don't think there are easy black-and-white answers to these questions. There was a time when I would have said that a person should stand on their own two feet, and if they could not, too bad for them. But this is not Sparta, first, and second, I've begun to see the cost to society of NOT helping; now I think a balanced approach is more reasonable from a moral as well as a financial (taxpayer impact) point of view. I also find it galling when people appear not to want to recover, get better, join society as productive members, and demand services which they feel they have coming. I resent it; I know a lot of people resent it. I also think there is a tendency for us to have mercy for those who have suffered physical injuries which they did not bring upon themselves, and to have much less sympathy for those who appear to use to have 'done it to themselves' through drink, drugs, and emotional or mental problems which we do not see an obvious cause for. In other words, we seem more willing to extend services to a person born with a physical deformity than to a person who is sunk deep into the booze bottle.

In answer to the issue, I guess I have to say this...

I would rather people like this not cost us so much. However, given that we spend the money on social services at all, I don't resent his use of that kind of money. He is, if nothing else, an example and hopefully a lesson in how we are failing to deliver services that change lives so that we don't have to keep spending the same money over and over again. And I would frankly rather the money be spent on him than on waste and fraud. Even though is is clear that much of the money spent on him did not immediately 'take', it was also not going into his pocket while he lived a life of relative luxury. We are losing billions of dollars to social services fraud, by doctors, insurance companies, and recipients who make fraudulent claims, fake injuries, and otherwise game the system. That money is wasted; that money goes for nothing. And that's something I'd sooner see addressed than the money we spent on this fellow.

And some of the fraud we're experiencing isn't the kind you would expect. Some of it is very casual fraud committed by people whom you would normally consider decent people if not outright heroes. Not many know that very many police and firefighters these days retire on disability pensions, rather than taking a 'normal' retirement. It's not at all uncommon. The same is true of union workers, and postal workers. And even our military; we have young and relatively able-bodied men and women coming out of the service, having served in Iraq or Afghanistan in a war zone, claiming disability and getting it for PTSD and similar ailments. And I'm not claiming PTSD doesn't exist or isn't disabling; but I feel strongly that it is being severely abused in the name of thanking our veterans (and as you know, I *do* thank our veterans) and correcting past problems when we refused to accept that veterans were mentally and emotionally injured by their wartime experiences. After Vietnam, if you weren't missing a limb, you could not get disability. Now, if you come home and have bad dreams, you may be able to get a partial pension for life. This is going to cost us HUGE amounts of money over time; the bill hasn't even started coming due yet.

So there you go. I don't like the idea of spending millions of taxpayer dollars to dry out a wino. But given the alternatives, and the fact that this guy is atypical, I think I'm not as bothered by it as I am by the fraud and waste going on in our social services and entitlements systems currently. I'd rather see us concentrate on those problems, and God bless and keep Cecil Leading Horse well and on the path to recovery.

 

[ballen0351]

The problem with made up numbers: they're made up. All due respect, your last post didn't establish anything. It is conjecture.Now if you show it in real numbers, then it is interesting.

Ill give it a shot using my real number to the best of my ability.
This is a typical DUI nothing extra
From the time I stop you until the time I walk out of the detention center and write my report on the incidnet takes roughtly 4 hours as long as nothing goes worng.
so I make 31.75 per hour x 4 = 127.00
Now if you agree to take a breathalizer test durinng that process add a half hour to that so now im up to $142.87
The Breathalizer op on my shift was a Sgt making approx 42.00 an hour. It tales about 30 min for the test to be done so add $21.00 to my 142.87= 163.87
Now we go see a court commissioner. Starting salary for that position is $65,000 which works out to $31.25 per hour. It take about 1 hour at the commissioner as long as your not too drunk that you slow the process down
$163.87 + 31.25= 194.25
Now we leave and go to the jail to sober up. They require 2 guards at intake with a starting salary of 16.83 per hour. intake is quick taking 30 min at Max.
194.25 + 16.83 = 211.08
Now you sit at the jail for a min of 6 hours with one guard keeping watch. 16.83 x 6 hrs = 100.98
211.08 + 100.98= 312.06
So your inital cost to the tax payer so far is $312.06 Then I get to go to court I get time and a half for court at a min of 4 hours. So that comes out to 190.50 added to $312.06 for a grand total of $502.56.
$502.56 for a BASIC simple DUI not counting any extras like if you resist a little then we are required to have two officers with you during processing and transports to the Commissioner and jail. Not counting if your too drunk and we have to go to the hospial first for a few hours and you have to be guarded by an officer. Not counting if you had an accident or any number of extras.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Josh it's not a personal attack. Trust me, I've been a member of Martial Talk for a long time and I've seen some horrendous personal attacks and some that were quite subtle but none-the-less still violating posting policy. We are indeed an informal forum when discussing things outside the realm of Martial Arts. None of us are rocket surgeons or brain scientists but we do have some mighty educated folks here, yet they're not going worry about precision unless it is specified. JKS did admit it : " And I just made up the numbers; I think they're reasonably justifiable, probably reasonable over the course of the year." So we know it's just a rough estimate based on his extensive experience as a law enforcement officer... read: cop/police. I can probably do the same thing if we were talking about the cost of going to visit a cave that's been vandalized and cleaning it up. I won't have exact precise numbers but more-n-likely I'll be close enough for government work. :wink1: However, if you still feel personally jumped on, there is that little triangle with the exclamation point in it which is designed to bring it (the specific post) to the mods attention and they can review and decide if you were attacked or no and take suitable actions.

Caver, read all the posts. I don't feel that billc personally attacked ME. I feel he personally attacked jks9199. Why would I feel jumped on? As far as the statistics, I stand by what I wrote. As far as billc, if I thought he MEANT it as a personal attack, I WOULD have reported it. I don't think he meant it as one, it just strikes me as one. But I stand by what I said about not lowering our standards for one another. You're not going to be able to make an effective case for the contrary.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Bill, while that was a FANTASTIC post, I think 20 years is an obscene amount of time, and I still think $2.5 million is an obscene amount of money. You are absolutely right that this is an outlier. I had originally meant to use this as an example of an extreme situation, and ask how much is too much. That the guy was an alcoholic and both a heroin addict and dealer touched a raw nerve in me, and retracted from my normal awesomeness.