Old Wound: When I Was Arrested (long, story format, lacking direction)

The BBQ Pit
1

This is digging up an old wound for me, but it is something that still fucking bothers me to this day, and I’d like to know if any dopers have has similarly frustrating experiences with the law.

Background:
In the state I lived in carrying a gun in any manner other than ammo seperate and gun locked was illegal. I had a gun in my car anyway. Impetuousness of youth? Stupidity? Fuck it. It was a little of both and some other poor character traits which I had at the time. Let it be said that I admit it was-- shall we say-- a poor decision in the first place and leave it at that.

SO, a friend who was living a good 30 minutes away was in town for the night and we went to the bar. I had one beer at approximately 8 and then we drank cokes for the rest of the night. We left the bar at 11:30 PM and were still up for bullshitting, so we were just driving around town, catching up on shit. I make a turn down a street and realize the time we;ve spent cruising, so I decide to turn around and head back to the bar to drop him off. I had to work at 7 AM the next morning and it was pushing 12:00 as it was. Conveniently there was a business’s drive to tun around in.

This is a long drive; the business is set back rather far. So I pull in and suddenly we hear it: an alarm is going off. “Fuck,” I tell him, “the fucking alarm is going off.” Master of the Obvious, I know. So I hurredly turn around and start to leave when we hear the sirens approach. As I neared the exit the cop cars pulled in and there I sat. Looking like I was leaving as, in fact, I was.

“Driver, turn off your car!” I did. I lit a cigarette. “Step out of the vehicle! Both of you!” We did. They pull us apart and start asking some questions.

Cops: “What were you doing there?”
Me: “Turning around.”
Cops: “Where were you going?”
Me: “To drop my friend of at his car so we could both go home.”
Cops: “Why is that alarm going off?”
Me: “I have no idea.”
Cops: “You know there’s been a robbery there within the last month?”
Me: “No.”
Cops: “What were you doing there?”
Me: “I just told you.”
Cops: “We’ve got probable cause here; my partner is going to search your car. Ar we going to find anything?”
~~At this point, I’m merely standing there facing the car in cuffs. The cop is behind me.
Me: “Yeah. There’s a .45 under the passenger seat.”
Cops: “GUN! GUN IN THE CAR!” Their panic escalates.
Cop by car: “I’ve got the gun!”
erl gets his rights read and is stuffed in the car.

Funny thing is, both my friend and I were put in the back of the same car. He says to me: “What the fuck are we going to tell them?”

“The truth.” pause “That fucking alarm. God damn. Story of my fucking life.”

“This is like something that would happen to *******. His luck is just as shitty.”

“Yeah,” I say. ******* once got a flat tire, called a tow truck, and when the tow truck came it, too, got a flat tire. Fucking incredible. I laughed, remembering. “I’m fucked,” I tell him. He says nothing.

So we’re in the holding cell for all of two minutes and then we both get taken to seperate questioning rooms. More dialogue follows.
“So you want to tell me why you were there when the alarm was going off?” he asks me.
“I told you already,” I said, recognizing the cop. “I was just turning around and heard the alarm go off.”
“Why were you in such a hurry to leave?”
“I think that’s obvious: a fucking alarm was going off. I didn’t want to be a part of whatever was going on there. Do you know yet what caused the alarm to go off?”
“Not yet, they’re still investigating. Why did you have a gun in your car?”
“Why do you carry a gun with you?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he quickly retorts. I shrug and offer no more response. “We found some black gloves and a black scarf in the car, too. Wanna tell me about those?”
“They’re for keeping warm and working outside.”
“Its only September.” I look at him like he’s from another planet.
“It’s been cold in the mornings, remember? My job requires me to work outside in the mornings, and its cold, and I wear protective gear. The gloves double as stopping holly bushes from poking me; regular gardening gloves don’t do the trick.”
“Yeah, but they’re black.”
“So? Your uniform is midnight blue. This table is off-white with fucking scratches in it.”
“You mean you don’t think that is a little suspicious?”
“It is a color.” He looks at me. “No, I don’t.”
“Well, I do. When I see a car pulling out of a lot with an alarm going off, and the guy has dark clothing and a weapon in the car I get a little suspicious.” I shrug at the cop and reply.
“Yes; I admit all factors taken together it would certainly raise an eyebrow.”
“So why do you carry the gun?”
“Why would anyone carry a gun?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You didn’t like my last one either. Should I just start making things up for you?” He sighs a tired sigh. He gets up and leaves for a bit. I stare at the boring walls and think about absolutely nothing. If ever I was a Zen master it was at that moment. The cop returns and sits down again.

“We’ve been questioning your friend.”
“I expected as much,” I tell him.
“He had some interesting things to say.” What? What the fuck would he have said? “Care to tell me again why you have that gun?”
“I don’t mind you asking the same questions over and over again, ‘What are you doing there?’ ‘Why do you have a gun?’ but you’re going to get the same or similar answers each time you ask because they’re the truth. Why don’t you tell me what you want to hear so we can get this interview over with; obviously I’m not answering correctly.” I am told that I’m being charged with some felony concerning a firearm and am then taken into the fingerprinting room.

They check my shoes, they check my mouth, they pat me down for the third time that evening. They ask me factual questions regarding age, SS number, had I ever been arrested before (no), and take my fingerprints. They asked if I had anything to drink that evening. I tell them yes, in fact, I had a single beer at 8PM. They give me two drunk tests, one where I had to stand on one leg and say the alphabet, and another where I had to follow the female cop’s pen around. Amusing.

“You’re pretty calm about all of this.”
“Getting upset isn’t going to solve anything.”

They finish booking me and walk me back to the holding cell. As we’re heading back I ask, “So did you find out about the alarm yet?”
“Yep. False alarm. There was no visible damage to the building, and all doors were locked.” Great.

I am not allowed to sleep in the holding cell. Cold as it is, I am not allowed to pull mu arms inside of my shirt.

On the way to county lock-up, the cop and I are bullshitting (same cop I’ve been with the whole time) about various things. Television, music, politics. Kids. Adults. Little snippits of commentary that may have been cut and pasted from any opinion page in any local newspaper.

“You know,” he said, “When you said there was a gun in your car, I drew mine out and had it right at your back.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“If you had even flinched I would have shot you.”
****What the FUCK do you say to that? I have never been in a life threatening situation before. My adrenaline was long gone, but apparently my fight or flight response had at least occurred at the right time; I wasn’t flinching then. How do you respond to a guy who just informed you he would have fucking killied you for flinching?

I was stunned. I still am. Was he even serious, or just being a hard-ass? What did he have to gain from telling me that? Was it supposed to command awe in the power of the police? Was it supposed to make me respect him? Was it to put the fear of God in me?

I was just informed that the man who was transporting me to confinement had no qualm about killing me.****
“Really,” was what I came up with.
“You never know what you’ge going to come up against.” Except for the fact that I fucking TOLD you what you were going to find.

I had nothing more to say to the man. In hindsight, I was far too polite, by my measure, to a guy who was prepared to end my life while I was in handcuffs in a town where the biggest crime was a few drug dealers getting busted every odd year and curfew violations. There were few areas where a cop had such a life. There were no gunfights. The occassional drunk got rowdy at the local diner. Andy fucking Griffith would have been at home (after a little modernization, anyway).

Well, I suppose it isn’t much of a rant. To tell the truth, I just hated the questioning I had received by the guy. What I gave above was a somewhat shortened version; in all honesty I had the same questions asked of me at least five times each, not including when he was asking me stuff at the scene. I also was not impressed with being informed that I was on the verge of death.

For some closing, I should note that my friend was not so cool with the questioning. In an attempt to get the cop to stop asking questions he ended up making up a story about how we were homosexual, and I had “a thing” for black gloves and guns. What a fucking character. But that answer satisfied the cops; oh, they ate that right up.

I should have told him the fucking aliens were out to get me if what he wanted was a sack of shit he could smear on his report.

Fuck him. Fuck him and his testosterone-ridden morality. I’ve never been the most upstanding citizen, I won’t lie, but let me tell you, my experience with him fell drastically short of reform.

Some other interesting tidbits from this, the owner of the establishment I worked at confronted me about the affair with his brand of street justice and prompty informed me that if I screwed up even a little bit (which I never had before that point) I was out.

The local paper was sure to use “alleged” in accusing me, while giving out my address to he entire county. At least they spelled my name right.

The county prosecutor was happy to bring it down to a misdemeanor provided I plead guilty and turn over the gun. though my lawyer wanted to, originally, push that they shouldn’t have searched my vehicle he felt I should take it. So I did. My lawyer also told me that I should never volunteer information to the police… just in case my trust wasn’t already at an all-time low.

In county jail I met three other people who were also in for the exact same thing I was. I found out that I was charged with a fourth degree felony; a fifth (one grade lower) degree was B&E, which I met a chap who was in there for just such a thing. Apparently actually damaging property and attempting to steal it isn’t quite so bad.

It was then that I lost all faith in my government and its method of policing. They have done nothing indicative of trying to earn that trust back. Could it have been worse? Of course; I could have been dead for flinching. Would have made a fantastic epitaph.

Anyone who says that the government doesn’t have too much power has never been arrested by assholes.

2

Kind of hard to know what to say here. Your luck basically sucked, but on the other hand, you were carrying a loaded firewarm illegally and couldn’t even give a reasonable reason why you had it. (Couldn’t you at least have told them that you liked to go out and target shoot?) As far as the police were concerned, you were indistinguishable from someone up to no good. I’d say you gambled and lost. It could have been much worse – Massachusetts has (or had) a mandatory one year jail term for illegal handguns.

As for the police officer telling you that he was a flinch away from shooting you – maybe that was his way of letting you know the seriousness of the situation.

3

Since misery loves company, I’ll share my two run-ins with the law, both of which I felt were patently ridiculous:

1. Some friends and I discover that a decent way to pass a Friday evening is to play paintball with slingshots at a local park in town. NOT guns, mind you, slingshots. The best spot, however, is near some softball fields and a concession stand in a fenced-off area, which necessitated hopping a fence to get there and back.

Well, one night we’re climbing the fence to go home when a lone beat cop happens by. He sees us and completely, utterly freaks out. A weapon is drawn, orders are shouted for the six of us to lay motionless on the ground, and we hear him radio for “emergency backup”. A few moments later, SEVEN additional police cars show up, sirens blazing, and we are cuffed at gunpoint and placed into the backs of various squad cars.

Eventually, we’re told, “well, that concession stand back there’s been robbed in the past,” as a justification for all this.

But wait. It gets better. The police, having just spent a huge amount of manpower on six people who are essentially guilty of nothing, realize they’d better have something to show for it. Finally, someone realizes that Officer Panicky made his initial call at 10:07. Ah ha! The park closed at 10:00! Problem solved! So we were all given trespassing citations for being caught in a city park, SEVEN MINUTES after the posted closing time, while heading towards our vehicles to leave. :rolleyes:

And of course the judge refused to waive or reduce the fine after hearing the tale above, and so we each had to shell out $70. Which was especially galling, considering the person just before us had run a stop sign and caused a 3-car accident, and was given a measly $40 fine.

2. Hanging out with friends again, this time in the middle of the night in Ames, Iowa (an asscrack of a town, for those who’ve never been there). Bored out of our skulls, one guy realizes he’s got a few firecrackers in his car, and we have a few moments of fun setting them off in a 2-liter bottle in the parking lot for the stadium at ISU.

We’re driving around a few minutes later, and someone notices a cop car’s following us very closely. Then two. Then three. Then three more appear to block us in at a T-intersection. On come the spotlights, and a voice on a loudspeaker orders us out one by one where we are, again, cuffed and placed in squad cars. Only this time, I notice there’s two officers with pistols, one with a rifle, and one with a shotgun trained on us as we’re being order out.

We go through the same rigamarole wherein the cops realize we haven’t really done anything, and this time we’re given citations for discharging fireworks, which it turns out is illegal in Iowa.

And the justification? Three cops were on the far side of the parking lot when we set off the firecrackers, and apparently ALL THREE of them mistook it for the sound of automatic weapons fire. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

This time, the judge was even less forgiving - we again repeated our tale of woe, and in response he sputtered angrily, “Well, you’re just lucky they wrote you up on a municipal violation. I’m not even sure they’re allowed to do that, but if it was a state violation like it should’ve been you’d be looking at $1,000 fines each. See, we take fireworks VERY SERIOUSLY here in Iowa.”

We ‘luckily’ got off with $150 fines each instead. And later, on our way back home, we stopped to piss on the “Welcome to Iowa” sign at the state border. :wink:

4

Both stories are incredible to me as examples of morons who did things that are guaranteed to push cop’s buttons, and then couldn’t understand why they didn’t get released with a pat on their backs when they told their story.

The OP admitted that he was carrying an illegal firearm when he set of an alarm in the middle of the night. What the hell was the cop supposed to think? If you and your buddy were going to rob the place with a gun, would you have told a different story than you actually did? If you were going to rob the place, would you have said to the cop “aw, shucks, you got me, officer”? You’d have said something like “I pulled in to turn around.” So how’s the cop supposed to know that you’re telling the truth? You made a stupid decision to carry the gun (which you admitted was stupid), and got unlucky. You know why the cop got all twitchy as soon as a gun was involved? Because more cops are killed during traffic stops than at any other time.

You’re trying to blame the cops/government/the man for a run of bad luck, compounded by your own mistake. Pathetic.

5

A couple years back, while still living at my parent’s in the suburbs of Montréal, I had my first contact (and only) with the local police.

I was waiting for a friend who was getting off work around 01:30AM and 02:30AM (he worked at a newspaper-printing company) to come and pick me up. A bunch of us were heading to Palmer’s Beach (sp?) in the States and since we all worked nights or evenings, we decided to leave at 03:00AM.
Since I was still living with my parents, I decided to wait on the back porch with a book and some cigarettes. Around 02:00AM, I ran out of cigarettes, so I decided to go get some at the all-night convenience store a couple of blocks from home.

While I’m walking there, I hear police sirens & squealing tires, but I figure that since I’ve done nothing wrong, it doesn’t concern me. I buy my cigarettes and start walking back home.

As I got closer to the house, I saw 2 police cars and a police minivan all pull up towards me, one car and the minivan going the wrong way down the street. Right as I turn to head up the driveway to my parent’s house, the doors open on the cars and van and cops come pouring out. One of the officers in the van (in front of me) aims a shotgun at me and tells me to drop to the concrete and put my hands in front of me, with my fingers spread.

As I’m complying (and thinking “Please don’t make me a statistic, people get shot by the police mistakenly often enough to have statistics on it!”) 2 cops apear beside me, guns drawn and start to scream at me (in french, obviously) but the essence of it was go down quicker, spread your arms further, reach further, while another guy put his foot then knee on my back and put his gun on the back of my head and kept saying “don’t move, don’t flinch, don’t move, just don’t even think about it” and so on.

A cop started patting me down and freaked out when he came upon a lump in my back pocket. I explained they were my keys and he started saying (more like yelling) “What keys? where’s the car, you &#@&*#, Where’s your gun?” and I just kept telling them I lived right there, just check my wallet & ID, go ring the doorbell and wake up my parents if you like, I LIVE HERE. At the same time, I could hear the cops’ radios broadcasting something along (paraphrase & translated) “suspect is on foot, height 6 foot 1 about 200 pounds, 25 to 30, long black hair and long black coat possibly latino…” and so on.

You’d be surprised how much attention you pay to every detail and how cristal-clear everything is when you realise that all it takes is someone flinching for you to end up shot.

At one point, someone found my ID and realised I was telling the truth, but he had to yell that it wasn’t me, let’s go! a couple of times before it seemed to sink in (“C’est pas notre gars, on y va! C’est pas lui!, Envoye! C’EST PAS LUI! ON Y VA CÂLISSE!!!”) The cop that had my wallet just dropped it to the sidewalk and went back to his car, the one that had his gun to my head told me to go home and not come out and swore at me. (“Rentre chez-vous pis sort pas, p’tit tabarnak!”)

Slamming car doors, squealing tires & they are gone. No one even apologized for making me go through this. I find myself lying on the sidewalk right in front of my parent’s house, my back hurting like hell, my chin abraded from having my head pushed on the sidewalk (I had also bitten my tongue) and when I went to check in the bathroom mirror, using a hand-held mirror I could see I had a circular pressure mark on the back of my head where one of them had his pistol. The next day I had a bruise.

Did I mention that at the time I was eighteen years old, 5’10" & a puny 145 lbs and had shortish blonde hair?

I didn’t complain to avoid the tarbaby principle (where you end up stuck to what you try to attack) but still feel pissed off about that and to this day will not trust a police officer. I have seen too many instances of abuse, either IRL or on the news. It seems the police in my province (Québec) are a bit psycho. I could tell you stories :eek:…

6

“I fought the law, and the law won. And because they did they’re pricks. I mean, sure, I broke the law, but that doesn’t mean I have to be treated like a criminal! Really, don’t they have better things to do than arresting people breaking the law?”

7

I lived in Montreal for four years, and the reason I’m so respectful to cops is just because of the MUC. Remember the shoplifter who was shot in the back of the head, while handcuffed, laying facedown on the sidewalk, in exactly the position you were in?

95% of police officers are good people doing a difficult job. Of the rest, some are having a shitty day, some have a wife who’s fucking the plumber, and some are just plain wack. That’s all the more reason not to piss them off.

8

Huh. Let’s see: Aimlessly driving around; found at location where burglary took place recently; alarm at location going off; dark clothing in car; illegal gun in car. Why in the world would those bastards think you were up to something? :rolleyes:

There are explanations for lots of things that on the face of it look pretty bad. Heck, you could probably come up with an innocent explanation why you were covered in blood, standing over a freshly stabbed-to-death body, with the murder weapon in your hand. (“I was walking home from my job at the butcher shop. I saw this guy stab this other guy in the back and run. I ran over to see if I could help the guy. I pulled the knife out so I could roll the guy over. Then you cops showed up.”)

But the fact is that the cops have to look at the facts as they see them, and draw conclusions accordingly. They also tend to be suspicious people and, yes, occasionally assholes. They’re cops.

It seems to me that while you were apparently innocent, you could just as easily have been guilty. It also seems to me that you did little to improve your position by choosing to be less than perfectly honest with the cops. “Why were you carrying a gun?” is a legitimate question under the circumstances, and “Why do you carry a gun, Mr. Cop?” a flippant and evasive (and therefore unwise) answer. You could have explained it to him the way you explained it here: “I don’t know; it seems pretty stupid now. Considering how much trouble it got me in, I wish I hadn’t been.”

:: Shrug :: I suppose it’s too bad the episode caused you to lose faith in the system, but I confess it hasn’t shaken mine. And I don’t see taking a suspect in for questioning when discovered under suspicious circumstances to be in any way indicative of “too much power.” What did you want? This? “Well, he’s here at the scene with the alarm going off and a gun and dark clothing in his car, and his only explanation is that he chose this particular place and time to try to turn around. But he’s explained that he was just out driving around – better let him go!” I can’t be too outraged that didn’t happen.

9

yup Jodi’s right. Though you knew you were innocent, everything about what you did, how you did it, where you were, etc, screamed out 'watch out for me!!!"

here’s my tale

NOte that once again, the hero (me) was totally innocent of the major wrong doing, that there were reasonable explanations as to how the scene looked, but that the police involved had no way of knowing or verifying the info (at lest at first in my case).

Rule o’thumb - even when you’re innocent don’t ‘cop’ an attitude. It will not generally help your case.

10

What really pissed me off is that in my case I hadn’t done anything wrong, I just happened to walk home at the wrong time. To say I brought it on myself is inexplicable.

Hansel
I realise that only 5 or whatever % of police officers are inherently corrupt and bad, but I also think that in the heat of the moment and with the adrenaline pumping even good cops can make bad calls because they’re too nervous or whatever. These people should remain calm in all situations, that’s a part of what they’re paid to do. The guy with the gun to my head was the scariest individual I have ever met. He was the last one to let go, one of the cops had to turn around and grab him. One of scarier moments in the whole thing, I litteraly felt the guy on my back flinch. I’m just happy he didn’t shoot me by accident. I do not hate the police, I just stay the *(&# away from them, since some are people with guns itching to use them and I have no way of knowing who are the good guys and who are the 5 or whatever the actual numer % of “bad cops” out there.

11

The entire system is set up on checks and balances. These checks and balances aren’t just for the the branches of government. They’re for every citizen to use for him or herself.

Freshman year of college, I was drinking alcohol in my dorm room with some friends when the cops busted us. They searched our room, they searched the fridge, and they had us dump $40 worth of booze straight down the toilet. Whose fault was that? Mine. Not because I was drinking, but because I didn’t say “No, officer, I’m sorry, but you can NOT look through my room and you can NOT open my fridge. I am invoking my 4th amendment rights. Get a warrant or get out.” I didn’t. My fault.

You have the right to a lawyer. They surely told you this when you were arrested. If they didn’t, that’s even more power on your side. Why didn’t you ever ask for one? You have the right to sleep in that holding cell. To not allow you to do so is improper interrogation procedure. You may or may not have had the right to not have your car searched without a warrant. I’m not going to say one way or the other. But for your lawyer to not pursue it is either sloppy or lazy. That’s not the police’s fault. That’s his…which makes it yours.

Yes, cops can be rough. They’re doing their job. Do yours as an American citizen and fight back. If you just bend over, you really can’t complain about the ass fucking several years later.

12

As I recall, that’s exactly the reason given for the “accident” when that shoplifter got his head blown off. The guns the MUC use have hair triggers, and the cops are poorly trained to handle situations like that calmly. In Montreal, they’re trained to be cowboys, not peace officers.

Not that the inquest brought that poor shoplifter back to life…

Which is exactly why they all get my immediate and unconditional respect. “Yes sir, she’s a cunt for fucking the pool guy. No sir, I don’t have anything illegal on me. Yes sir, your boss is a prick.”

In Mississippi, I actually stood on the side of the highway and listened to a state trooper witness to my Jewish companion for a half hour, once it was established that we’d done nothing wrong. If it hadn’t been so twisted, I would have laughed:

Officer Robert Charles: “you do know that there is rebelliousness in your heart, don’t you?”

Lisa: “Yeah, um, well, you know… I’m easygoing.”

Officer Robert Charles: “you do know that there is rebelliousness in your heart, don’t you?”

13

I probably haven’t been clear. I stay away from police, but if I’m forced to interact with them I am obviously polite, since you don’t want to give a person with a gun a reason to get angry at you.

14

Jesus man, you had a fucking illegal firearm in your damn car, what the fuck are you complaining about? if you are going to bitch about something bitch about your bad luck for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, not at the cops for doing what any reasonable person would.

15

handy, I did not set off the alarm. I never even came close to the building; it was going off when I arrived.

I am upset that they searched my car; they could take me in for questioning, sure, and then investigate the alarm. Should the call be indicative of a crime then be my guest.

Secondly, I fucking told them the gun was in the car (as they were already in it by that time, without even asking me). Not like the guy was going to be suprised when I suddenly threw off my handcuffs in a bal of green flame, flew five feet in the air and shot lighting at them. i was fucking handcuffed. Right in front of him.

Gee, did you miss where I understood why they would be suspicious? I don’t like guilty 'til proven innocent, and it isn’t like the building was so far away that they couldn’t find out I hadn’t broken into it in less than 20 minutes. I’d have been happy to sit down and wait it out while they checked.

Whatever. No one deserves that much respect without me knowing them. Fuck, all that does is feed their already power-inflated egos.

Fight back? And risk becoming a felon? Oh, that would accomplish a lot. It would accomplish me sticking up for myself, probably losing, becoming a felon, and losing any chance I had of a decent future. No thanks.

16

ERIS –

They didn’t believe you, my friend. This upsets you, and I can see why. But I can also see why they didn’t believe you – the circumstances, taken together, were highly suspicious. The fact that you told them the gun was in the car is of course a point in your favor but really proves nothing – even if you had been trying to rob the place you might well have decided the wisest thing was to alert them to the gun, since they would undoubtedly find it anyway, and since they had already announced they were going to search the car.

The fact that you had not yet had a chance to try to break in didn’t mean that you didn’t intend to try. I mean, put yourself in the cops’ position for a minute – what would you have thought? And I would suggest that they deserve a great deal of respect regardless of whether you know them or not – just because they are cops and can make your life hell if they want to, as you yourself found out. Consider that a form of self-preservation – I do. I recently was pulled over by a cop who sarcastically questioned me, belittled my answers, and impugned my upbringing (I wasn’t smart enough to follow the traffic rules in Washington because I came from “the sticks” – Montana). (I had run a stop sign; being unfamiliar with the neighborhood, and looking for an address, I hadn’t seen it.) My every insinct was to just ask him “Why are you being such an asshole?” But what he got from me instead was “yes, sir,” “no, sir,” “sorry, sir.” Because he was a cop and I had broken the rules. I’m not saying it’s easy to swallow – jeez, it sure sticks going down – but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

That doesn’t mean he wasn’t an asshole. He was, and it sounds like the cop you dealt with was too (the part about shooting you was gratuitous, mean-spirited, and totally unnecessary). But I don’t think that proves “the system” has failed. I think it proves some cops are assholes. Quelle suprise.

17

If you think I’m telling you to love cops, you’re not getting it. I’m saying that attitude towards cops gets you nothing but more trouble. Generally, being polite, co-operative, and not a dick (“why do you carry a gun, officer?.. So? Your uniform is midnight blue. This table is off-white with fucking scratches in it.” ) will avoid trouble that wasn’t already coming your way, through your own fault or through circumstances.

What was the result of your little escapade? You got charged with a crime of which you were guilty. Jail wasn’t very nice? Too bad, it’s not supposed to be.

You were unlucky, and you were guilty of a felony. Sounds to me like you got just what you deserved for the felony, and didn’t get into more trouble from what was a really shitty set of circumstances. Even though the place wasn’t broken into, there was reason to believe that you were about to when the alarm went off, and were fleeing (as a cop, that would be my first thought).

Blaming the system for working when you were inconvenienced by circumstances is sad. Just sad.

18

You already were at risk of becoming a felon. I don’t know if you thought “fight back” meant to take a swing at the cop, because it wasn’t.
I’m saying that you should have used the tools that you had at your disposal, the ones every American has, guilty or innocent, to check the power of the police force.
Why couldn’t you have called a lawyer sooner? Why couldn’t your lawyer have brought up charges of 4th and 8th amendment violations? Why didn’t you invoke your right to remain silent?

If there’s a lesson to be learned from your OP, it’s not that the system has failed you, it’s that you failed to use the system.

19

Depends on if carrying a concealed loaded weapon is a felony or not. If it is, you were already a felon when the cops met you.

20

MONTY, you surely recognize that one is not a “felon” until one is convicted of a felony, yes? Since it is a class of crime and not a crime itself (as opposed to, say, murder - one becomes a “murderer” upon doing a murder), you can neither legally nor practically be considered a “felon” until you are convicted of a felony.