So many defected ex-Mos in southern Utah ... instead of switching from Mormonism or FLDS to some other religion, the new "religion" of choice seems to be booze and self-medicating.

A good percentage of the St George crime blog are arrested for DUI, and possession of illegal substances while behind the wheel.

In upstate NY there is nowhere near as high a percentage on a daily basis of people being arrested for DUI on our roadways. It happens, but not with the same frequency as southern Utah on any given day.

Religiosity plays a major role in how people interact with the dynamics of that community IMHO. The polarizing effect between the over conformists and under conformists is in sharp contrast with each other as they balance each other. Moderation is illusory.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/07/2018 09:18PM by Amyjo.

Fellow upstater. Check out the police blotters. Tons of local woodchucks busted every week.
BTW getting caught on your phone is five points now.

Not enough crime to keep the cops busy.

I'm an upstate like you. It's rare to see someone pulled over except for the occasional speeding ticket.

In southern Utah people get pulled over right and left. For not signalling (the "two second rule.") Although that's a ruse to pull cars over to find reasonable cause to conduct a search once they determine whether the driver is impaired. It seems like a state past time there, to get your mug shot in the St George crime blotter.

Some are literally smiling like you would for a year book photo. As though it's a badge of honor, instead of getting arrested lol.

I'll try to check our local crime blotters. Honestly, we don't publish them here if they do exist somewhere. Except maybe in the local local news, not the metro.

Most drivers here are very conscientious. I don't believe can say the same for the high rate of Utah's DUI's.

It could simply be due to the very long distances people are driving out west versus Upstate New York. When driving long distances people can sometimes be more aggressive and more careless. That coupled with much more aggressive policing can skew the stats. It's certainly true that just south of Vegas the speed limit drops dramatically and the police have a field day picking off motorists.

Five points? Oh boy!

I have blue tooth. Better get it hooked up.

That's a lot of opinions. Do you have any verified data we could look at? Are all those pulled over from St. George or are they passing through? Lots of questions.

The majority seem to be locals. Then there's the out-of-area ones passing through with either warrants outstanding when they get caught in St George, or picked up for something else.

Here's the crime blog that's published daily:

https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/arrests/

If it turns out that the data does not support your original contention, what might that have to say about your religiosity observations?

In reviewing the crime log entries, I didn't see the arrestee's religious affiliation listed. How many of them did you ID as exmos?

Based on demographics of the area. As for FLDS, they are easy to pick out by their haircuts or dos.

"77.97% of the people in St. George, Utah are religious, meaning they affiliate with a religion. 4.36% are Catholic; 70.39% are LDS; 1.04% are another Christian faith; 0.00% in St. George, Utah are Jewish; 0.00% are an eastern faith; 0.00% affilitates with Islam."

bestplaces.net

You pasted in some stats, from bestplaces(dot)net, and they were quite lovely stats, so precise, and out to the hundredths of a point!

Here's the quote:

77.97% of the people in St. George, Utah are religious, meaning they affiliate with a religion. 4.36% are Catholic; 70.39% are LDS; 1.04% are another Christian faith; 0.00% in St. George, Utah are Jewish; 0.00% are an eastern faith; 0.00% affilitates with Islam.


In this quote, 'affilitates' is misspelled, an error that makes the following even more amusing, because it's always present!!

Copy and paste your quote into Google. You'll get three pages of results. Your source used that same quote for every city in southern and central Utah. Most hilariously, at the top of the third page of results, it uses this quote to identify the religious make-up of Hildale, UT. Hildale!!! The home of the FLDS...

Your source declares that of the approximately 3,000 people in Hildale, 70.39% are LDS, while another 22.03% don't claim to have a religion. That's obviously incorrect.

Again, every city, county, and region in the southern half of Utah has the same exact stats assigned to it for religious affiliation. or affilitates...

And where your source says 0.00% are Jewish, you've told us in the past that you're aware of Jewish citizens there. That alone should have warned you that these stats are gimpy.

For all I know, your basic premise about exmos being the main source of DUI arrests could be correct. But "could be" and "statistically supported" are not the same thing.

Common sense alone would indicate the majority population there is LDS. The demographics support that conclusion. As for the Jewish population, they weren't included because they weren't numbered.

Out of a population center of 100,000 and growing rapidly, they make up less than one percent of the local population.

Some people have common sense. And then there is you looking for an argument where there isn't one.

Amyjo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Common sense alone would indicate...

Common sense would tell you that you're not moving, and that the sun is moving over you as you don't move during the day.
But that would be completely wrong.
So much for common sense.

> Some people have common sense. And then there is
> you looking for an argument where there isn't one.

And some people like to point out that common sense isn't all that useful, and that verifiable facts are. Which isn't so much an argument as it is just being reasonable.

Richard Koontz is invisible.

I think he's invisible because he's a registered (or supposed to be) sex offender.

Here his picture would be mailed to the locals if he were in our neighborhood. There, it may be withheld so he doesn't get murdered.

What an odd thing to say.

Not if his life has been threatened.

And you know this how?

Because his mug shot is missing. That is the logical explanation.

Have you heard of Occum's Razor?

Yes, I'm familiar with that. But you've made quite a leap in your reasoning.

Let's look at what the blotter says. It says that he is in custody. It says that he is being charged with failure to obtain an ID. It says that he has a Sex Offender Registry violation. That means that he is a sex offender already convicted and he failed to do what was required of him, such as getting a proper ID. It does not say he is a new offender or that he is being threatened. He is in custody.

Logically speaking, there is a reason why his mug shot has been withheld, when none of the others have been.

It was no accident.

There could be any number of reasons his picture was not posted.

#loud sounds of a poster crashing up on the Internet Highway...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

Given the reality that the percentage of New Yorkers who drive is far less than Southern Utahans, I'd say this thread rates "among the 10 worst" I've seen in my 20 years on RFM...

Seriously, Denial C. Peterson is going to have a field day with this one...

Former English Teaching Cabbie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> #loud sounds of a poster crashing up on the
> Internet Highway...
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
>
> Given the reality that the percentage of New
> Yorkers who drive is far less than Southern
> Utahans, I'd say this thread rates "among the 10
> worst" I've seen in my 20 years on RFM...
>
> Seriously, Denial C. Peterson is going to have a
> field day with this one...

I'll have to agree Cabbie... totally.

No, New Yawkers drive a heckuva lot more than southern Utahns.

Overall they tend to be safer drivers, with fewer DUI's. They're better educated too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2018 06:57AM by Amyjo.

Nonsense. I've been coming here for 20 years now, and "because I said so" sorts like you are simply evidence of just how damaging an LDS upbringing is.

Common sense--and the availability of public transportation--would tell anyone that a huge percentage of New Yorkers don't drive because they don't have to...

That's not the case in Utah. Sorry...

#I'm always dumbfounded at people who want to debate the subject of driving with me

Cabbie, having lived in NYC I can tell you that there are tons of drivers there. The highways in and around the city are always crowded. I had a car that I parked on the street for just about the entire time I lived there (remember, NYC is not just Manhattan, but the other four boroughs as well.) IMO the drivers overall are daring but very competent. Boston is the same. Plus the NHTSA statistics that Amyjo cites below backs that up, at least in terms of crash fatalities. She was also talking about New York state as a whole, not just NYC.

Driving around New York is a very different beast to driving on the endlessly long freeways out west where everything is several hundred miles apart.

The meaning of the term "percentage" appears to have eluded you...

There are also "tons" of non-drivers in areas like New York City; see "Commuter Rail," seriously.

#still wondering why people want to debate me on the subject of driving; you're going to suggest you have more miles on your hind end that I do?

Well, the stats that she cites (if you scroll down) do address fatalities per X number of registered cars, which takes non-drivers out of the equation.

You obviously have more hours driving total, but I most likely have more hours driving within NYC and NY state.

What's really important to the exmo cause is that ... is that, uh, is that ... drivers who are behind the wheel under the influence, are not keeping the word of wisdom, for one reason or another. Yeah, that's it!!

Are there any stats about how many "defected ex-Mos" drink & drive, and are any of us among them? But wouldn't a 'defected ex-Mo' be a person who stopped being an exmo? I absolutely have no intention of ever defecting from exmoism!

I guess that what bugs me most is the attempt to make this thread OT. "Religiosity plays a major role in how people interact with the dynamics of that community IMHO." Which community!?!?

"So many defected ex-Mos in southern Utah ... instead of switching from Mormonism or FLDS to some other religion, the new "religion" of choice seems to be booze and self-medicating."

I tried joining the Episcopal's and even joining the Catholic church after I left mormonism, but I found it too stiff. So I made the only other choice I could as a defected ex-Mo. I went with the booze and self-medicating.

You're right! A value judgment was made about your personal, authentic self!

St George is on a major trafficking route. No surprise there are a lot of busts there.

The police do an excellent job there as well on cleaning up street crime, including petty and traffic offenses.

The local lockup is named Purgatory for a reason!

;)

http://www2.erie.gov/sheriff/index.php?q=news

12 of 28 crime reports listed on this one page were driving with or under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.

No info on how many were exmos.

That list is from May 9 to July 6.

In St George, that many arrests account for a single day of its reporting. What you posted is nearly two months worth in a metro area 20 times the size of St George.

Opinions aside you are wrong.

https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/states-data-tables.html

https://www.madd.org/state-statistics/

It seems that Utah has fewer per capita drunk drivers than New York by a wide margin, even though New York has stronger laws and enforcement covering drunk drivers.


However I can see why you think the way you do. With a high percentage of teetotalers in Utah you would expect that the vast majority of the drunk drivers would be ex-teetotalers. Except that it seems to be a widely accepted idea that ex-teetotalers make up the smallest percentage of the population with the largest percentage being lapsed teetotalers.

Point being, you can't read the police blotter and come away with anything useful, except maybe some ammunition against your neighbor.

#Just another "because I said so!" type of poster...

Just off the top of my head, I'd estimate there are thousands of times more New Yorkers than Southern Utahans, and as noted, she's blissfully unaware of the reality that most living in New York City don't drive, period.

I consider NY drivers to be competent and safe. The drivers I've observed in the SL Valley IMO drive too fast for snowy road conditions. An SUV won't save you from everything. Maryland drivers do that as well, but they don't see nearly as much snow as Utah drivers do.

Per another study, Utah gets ranked in the top ten for the rudest drivers. They don't let people into their lanes safely, and are known for driving too fast.

Since the speed increase several years back, now they have a license to speed on the freeways @ 80 mph.

My brother tells me that the fatalities have increased since the increased speeding laws went into effect. The number of accidents have stayed the same. It's the level of injuries and fatalities that went up. That's a no brainer.

Shouldn't this be a separate thread?

This current thread was started to discuss the religious implications of the difference between DUI of alcohol and/or drugs in Southern Utah and Upstate New York, and the religious ramifications thereof.

And in that vein, the OP reached conclusions that may be totally unassailable!! As exmos, we need to learn these and live them:


"Religiosity plays a major role in how people interact with the dynamics of that community IMHO. The polarizing effect between the over conformists and under conformists is in sharp contrast with each other as they balance each other. Moderation is illusory."


I hope we can learn from these artful analyses. Take them one sentence at a time and savor them.

And let's stay on topic!

Utah has a higher fatality rate overall than New York drivers do, per the NHTSA studies. Wyoming is at the top of the chart. Population wise, the NE is where 55% of the US population resides, between DC and Canada. Some of the lowest stats favor the Northeastern states in the most heavily populous region of the country.

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812412

The stats for New England are great (with the exception of Maine,) as I suspected. New York and New Jersey are quite good. What really surprised me was the District of Columbia -- I consider the D.C, beltway to be quite treacherous. But they probably count that as Maryland and Virginia.

I don't like big cities, no matter where they are. Congested driving at its worst!

Don't miss NYC since I moved away. The traffic there is intense.

I don't miss NYC at all, Amyjo. Big cities are not for me, and I always found NYC particularly unappealing. It was good for me in certain ways, but I was glad when my time living there came to an end.

Same for me, Summer.

By the time I left there, I had moved on for good. The rents went sky high after we moved away. The same place we rented 20 years ago is now priced out of any middle-class family's earning capacity to live there. There was moderately priced housing then. Now it's all gone through the ceiling.

A single person cannot even rent a room or a studio for a reasonable rent.

My last visit there was right before 9/11. I flew into Newark, and took a shuttle over to the Marriott at WTC to walk the two blocks to my former office for some training. I'd walked that trek hundreds of times before when lived there. But on that last visit I was impressed how much NYC had changed since I'd moved away in 1997. It was teeming over with people, more than even when I lived there for nearly a decade of my life.

My dad used to tell me he'd come visit me pretty much anywhere but there. He hated big cities with a passion! Niagara Falls was more up his alley. That's where he took my step-mom on their honeymoon soon after they married, by automobile. And to see the house dad built in Massachusetts right after he was discharged from military duty following WWII. :)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/2018 01:11PM by Amyjo.

The housing situation was already bad in the 80s when I was living in NYC. I lived an hour away from my job in Brooklyn in what we used to call a "borderline" neighborhood (meaning the last marginally decent set of blocks before things get really bad.) I had a rotating set of two other roommates, most of whom were not wonderful. We were paying a high rent for the time, and my landlord was the epitome of the absentee landlord. She hated putting money into the deteriorating apartment with a passion.

A coworker used to talk about how things were very different as recently as the 70s. He said that there were tons of nice apartment buildings that were looking for tenants. You could easily find a nice apartment in Manhattan that was affordable. He said that the apartment complex would give you the first month rent for free, so he and his friends would hop from building to building. By the time I arrived those days were long gone.

My nephew lives in Brooklyn now with his little family. I will probably be visiting him soon. I don't think I will recognize Brooklyn. I haven't stayed in NYC in many years, just skirted around it while traveling to points north and east.

This happened on Saturday night in St. George. You can't make this stuff up:

"ST. GEORGE — What started with a routine traffic stop on a vehicle with a headlight out ended with an arrest on the driver for assaulting a police officer Saturday night in St. George.

Stavontae Tareece Gilliard, 24, of Oregon, was arrested for assaulting a police officer after driving over an officer’s foot and trying to drive away in St. George, Utah, July 7, 2018.

Stavontae Tareece Gilliard, 24, of Oregon, was pulled over for the headlight violation at about 11 p.m. on River Road and did not have a driver’s license or proof of insurance, according to police. Gilliard said he didn’t have his license or insurance card because his wallet was recently stolen, so the responding officer called his insurance company, who said his insurance was canceled months ago.

When the St. George Police officer told Gilliard that his vehicle was going to be impounded for not having insurance, Gilliard refused to get out of the vehicle, according to the probable cause statement. He then allegedly put the car into gear as the officer told him he was under arrest and asked him to exit the car.

That’s when Gilliard started driving away, the statement says. As the vehicle started to roll away, the rear driver side wheel ran over another police officer’s foot, causing him to fall to the ground.

The first police officer reached into the driver’s side window and tried to place his hands on Gilliard’s hands to prevent him from driving away.

“As the vehicle was moving, I tried to keep my right arm on Stavontae, and with my left hand, I reached around the steering wheel to turn off the car,” wrote the responding officer on the probable cause statement. “When the vehicle was moving, I had to lift my legs off the ground and keep my body in the vehicle.”

Gilliard allegedly drove about 20 mph with the officer sticking out of his window. Each time the officer’s feet dropped to the ground, he became worried his legs would get caught under the car.

“I knew at the time I could not release the vehicle because I felt I would be seriously injured,” the responding officer wrote.

The police officer was able to reach around to the key and turn off the car, but Gilliard turned it back on. The officer was then able to turn off the car by turning the key again and open the driver side door, according to the probable cause statement. Gilliard was able to drive about 450 feet before his vehicle was stopped for the last time.

Gilliard began reaching for the passenger side, so the officer wrapped his arms around him to prevent him from grabbing anything or driving off again.

The officer who had his foot run over used a stun gun on Gilliard, which allowed the officers to pull him from the car and onto the street. He allegedly continued to push back against the officers and refused to put his arms behind his back so he could be arrested. It took another shock from the stun gun before officers were able to grab his arms and place him in handcuffs, according to the probable cause statement.

Gilliard was then taken to Purgatory Correctional Facility and was charged with a second-degree felony for assaulting a police officer, as well as misdemeanors for failing to stop at an officer’s command and interfering with arrest. There were also citations against him for not having a driver’s license, operating a vehicle without insurance and for having a headlight out.

St. George Police officer Lona Trombley said both officers “are doing well” after the arrest."

https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2018/07/09/srr-police-man-runs-over-officers-foot-tries-to-drive-off-with-another-cop-sticking-out-of-window/#.W0QaM9JKjrc

This happened July the 9th!!


Woman clinging to car suffers serious injuries in Niagara Falls collision
By Dale Anderson | Published 5:06 p.m. July 9, 2018


A 46-year-old woman clinging to a car suffered serious leg injuries at about 3 p.m. Monday when the car was involved in a collision with another vehicle in the 500 block of 19th Street, Niagara Falls Police reported.

Officers said the woman was hanging onto the exterior of a 2011 Kia driven by a Niagara Falls woman as it pulled out of a driveway. It was struck by a southbound 2015 Ford driven by a 29-year-old Niagara Falls man, according to police.

The injured woman, who was not identified, was transported to Erie County Medical Center, where she underwent surgery. Police said she was in critical but stable condition.

The Niagara Falls Police Department’s Crash Management Team was investigating.


https://buffalonews.com/2018/07/09/woman-clinging-to-car-suffers-serious-injuries-in-collision/

That one isn't funny. The St George incident no one was seriously injured.

Although the jackass sitting in Purgatory is now where he belongs.

Ah! It has to be funny to be 'not OT'. Got it.

In all fairness, the man arrested in southern Utah is from Oregon. There's a good chance he isn't LDS or ex-Mo. But the cops who arrested him, are.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/2018 11:18PM by Amyjo.

Amyjo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So many defected ex-Mos in southern Utah ...
> instead of switching from Mormonism or FLDS to
> some other religion, the new "religion" of choice
> seems to be booze and self-medicating.


There is a clear correlation, actually. People who grow up in a community where the consumption of alcohol is considered normal, grow up consuming alcohol in a normal way. Those who grow up in a community where alcohol is banned, never learn how to deal with it, and when they start drinking, they may derail quite quickly.

In Europe, the countries that never had a minimum drinking age have fewer alcoholics than countries where teens aren't introduced to their first glass of wine at christmas but have to wait until they are "old enough to decide for themselves".

And in the muslim world, people who never drank can become problematic drinkers very quickly too, reinforcing the slippery slope clichés that fundies have about alcohol = alcoholism.

Nobody likes a moderate ;)