Back in the early 1900’s one of my ancestors broke into a local grocery store, was caught and sent to the county jail. He proceeded to break out of the jail, steal a horse from a local farm and then flee the state. Somehow he was caught in his new state some 10 years later and brought back to finish his sentence.
My father’s youngest brother wasn’t a true criminal, but he was kinda wild in his youth and spent some weekends in jail, in youth detention, for stealing a moped. When he was about 17, he had been drinking the whole night at a pub 10 kilometers from home (which was and still is legal in Germany). Now when it was time to get home, he was too drunk and/or too lazy to walk back home, so he took an unsecured moped standing outside the pub and rode home. Drunk as he was, he left the moped just outside his family home and went to sleep. He never intended to keep the moped, but the owner had reported the theft and the police had little trouble finding the bike and identifying my uncle as the thief. The consequences were a trial and a sentence for some uncomfortable weekends in jail.
The musical group?
I so assume. Note that the thread title is the chorus of a Clash song.
Good of you to notice, i could also have chosen “I fought the law, but the law won” but i wasnt just right…
(Since my intention was to find stories where the law won)
This is a family story for which I have no documentation to back it up and that was transmitted to me orally. Allegedly, a great-great-grandfather of mine from Southern Serbia, somewhere in the late 19th century, was a patriarchal asshole of the worst kind. When his wife gave birth to a daughter (my great-grandmother Leposava, my maternal grandfather’s mother), he was so angry that it wasn’t a son that he beat up his wife and threw his newborn daughter into the hearth! Some neighbors apparently heard the commotion and they took in the baby and raised her instead of her parents.
Eventually, my great-great-grandfather had the sons he desired. And when they became adults, those sons murdered their father, or organized his murder. I don’t know exactly how it happened. No motive was given and it’s possible they were after an early inheritance, but I’m guessing that he kept being an asshole toward his family and that it wasn’t merely about getting money.
The sons were convicted of the murder and were sentenced to maybe ten years in jail. All the same the murdered father’s property was divided up among the siblings and my great-grandmother got part of it. However, in those patriarchal times (by now we’re up to around the 1920s), husbands in Jugoslavia had control over their wives’ property and families still often functioned as a collective. Her in-laws took her inheritance and gave it to her wastrel brother-in-law so that he could open a tavern. Because he was a lazy drunk or some such person, the tavern did not prosper.
At least you didn’t shoot the sheriff, but not the deputy.
Shame none of these tunes are by Loggins & Messina. 
Once, when my fraternity brother Albert (Who was amongst the youth who located the Olympic Park Bomb; spending time with him is always an adventure…) and I were cruising down Daytona Beach in his convertible Mustang, blaring G’n’R and pounding Busch Heavies, we were pulled over by Baywatch.
We were busted, and we knew it, so there was no attempt to hide anything. The beach was mostly empty, since it was a gray, cloudy day, and the cops took pity on us. They told us to go up to a nearby beachside bar, get a cup of coffee, have the bartender sign it, and meet them back at the car.
We dutifully sidled up to the bar, explained all to the barkeep, and he poured us a few oat-sodas, printed the required coffee-related paperwork, signed it, and we went about our (mis)adventure.
When we got back to the car, they were long gone. We were left with our tickets (I think mine was $42.) and no court date.
Recently, I learned that a very close friend was questioned in the disappearance of JonBenet Ramsey. He was on Christmas break from college, and was visiting his cousin in Boulder. The night of Christmas Eve, he, his cousin, and the Ramsey’s gardener, with whom the cousin lived, spent the evening doing bong-rippers and sinking into the couch. They were pretty surprised when the cops showed up at some point, later, asking questions about their whereabouts that evening. There was evidence of their whereabouts, and that is why the gardener was removed as a person of interest in the investigation.
My great uncle the master mariner was put under house arrest in Mao’s Ministry of State Security.
The story as I have it is that when he docked his ship in Shanghai (or wherever) it was a national holiday (Madame Mao’s birthday, or some such) and he was told the stevedores wouldn’t unload or load cargo that day. He explained that he had a schedule to keep. They explained that this was regrettable but alas, a state holiday ordained by the Chairman was a Big Deal. He further explained that in that case his crew would unload, and to avoid creating unnecessary work for the dockhands, they’d simply tip the cargo into the sea and be on their way.
That worked. The stevedores and dockhands were put to work, cargo was duly exchanged. While this was going on some hasty phonecalls must have been made, because at some point before the job was finished he was arrested.
This caused a minor diplomatic incident. The first his family knew of it was when a nice Englishman in a good suit turned up at their door and explained that Her Majesty’s Government hadn’t expected to be involved in Chinese labour disputes that week, but that they were on the case and Alec was probably fine.
And he was. He spent three or four days in perfectly adequate accommodation being shouted at by various Chinese State Security officials.* On the last day they bought him drinks and cigarettes, gave him a rather nice jade statuette and parted friends.
*The joke was very much on them. I knew that man for about 30 years and in all that time I think I heard him say maybe 200 words. Unlike the other 99% of Irishmen, he had a rare gift for the stony silence. I embellish freely here, but I like to think of shift after shift of totalitarian cops screaming themselves hoarse while he sat there like a granite monk.
A bank robber hid out in a vacant cottage on my block. Cops transposed the house numbers and swarmed my house with rifles pointing. Redirected they peeled out of my then unpaved driveway splattering sand and gravel shrapnel across yard. They caught their man but never found the dough. I think it’s still in the cottage; now derelict a home for raccoons.
Back in the '60’s my father made industrial soap out of our garage. Stored it in jugs stacked up at the back of the garage. Someone (likely a neighbor) reported that he was making brandy and selling it. We were raided and my father arrested. They were disappointed to discover it was soap.
Since the OP title was mentioned as double negative, I dont know nothing about no negative.
Oh and dont two negatives equal a positive pluss. So the answer should be he hurt somebody.
Until I got through the next sentence I was trying to figure out what material a garage could have been made out of that would also make a good soap ingredient.
Same. I was also trying to imagine owning a mixer big enough to drop a garage into.
Ha! Took me a minute to figure out what the problem was! Gotta love the english language. (It has nothing to do with my command of the english language…)
My own brush with the law was back in the late 80’s. I went camping in Red River Gorge (Kentucky) with some friends. We were back in the woods at night sitting around a fire and drinking beer. Saw some flashlights moving through the woods. A couple of sheriff deputies and park rangers came back and arrested us for public intoxication. We spent the night in jail and paid a $72 fine. I guess they could see our fire from the road.
Doesn’t seem chargeable unless you all were visibly intoxicated (and presumably making pests of yourselves to other people, none of which were anywhere near you: “Caused a disturbance or harm to self, another person, or property” is the 2nd criteria listed here); seems awfully authoritarian for some bored LEO’s to go wayyy out of their way to pick on a group of guys harmlessly quaffing their beer and shooting the bull around a nice fire in the woods. Now, if they thought the fire was a hazard or was “bothering” someone else (in a public park where fires would be perfectly expected?) that would be different, but they apparently didn’t charge you for that.
Being Kentucky, the cops probably assumed those folks were moonshiners. And were disappointed when they just found drunk yahoos.
Or…
Since park rangers were involved, it’s a good bet they were in some sort of state or federal park. Perhaps one where alcohol use was prohibited.
No, they weren’t charged with violating the park no-booze rules. But that may have more to do with what’s easier to prosecute or has a better penalty or whatever. Or how badly the drunks pissed off the cops.
Wolf County Kentucky was a dry county at the time. Don’t know its current status.
The general opinion of the people we were locked up with (always trust the word of criminals!) is that it was a money grab. They saw Ohio license plate and figured we’d be drinking so they could get $72 from 4 people. When we were brought in the actual Sheriff said we could either pay the $72 fine (each) or post a $72 bond and come back for a trial at some future date. Which meant we would lose more money just to take a day off and drive that far.
It was a scam. Our mistake was to be close enough to the road that they could find us.
My mom’s first husband - married my uncle’s ex-wife* and then proceeded to kill her when they separated. He was in prison for the murder until he died.
*(My understanding of it is that they started an affair while my uncle was in Korea (Army))