So, tell us the story of when you were arrested...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The “Ask the Cop” thread has been really great reading, and it made me wonder how many of the dopers have been arrested. Arrests usually make for good stories.

Here is mine.

When I was 17 years old, at the beginning of the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I ran away from home. (I’m 30 now and I still stand by my decision, btw.)

I had a car… it was a hand-me-down from my mom. The car heirarchy in the house went my mom > Sonia (our permanent housemate) > me. The car was a 1976 Toyota Corolla and was mine for all intents and purposes, but it was in my mom’s name.

When I ran away, I waited for my mom to leave for work and I packed some stuff into my car and left. I went to my boyfriend’s house on the other side of town (about an hour away). My mom had never met my boyfriend (she refused) and didn’t even know his last name, so I figured that was pretty safe.

His parents also agreed with my decision and said I could stay there. They let me park the car in their backyard. Unfortunately, my boyfriend also drove a 1976 Toyota Corrola… blue like mine. His was a 2-door and mine was a 4-door, but that was the only difference. Oh, and mine was a 5-speed and his only a 4-speed.

Well, my mom went through my garbage and found his name. She sent the police to his house and they saw his car and called my mom saying “we found it.” This still stings. If he drove a different kind of car, things probably would have been very different.

Anyway, was arrested on charges of Grand Theft Auto. The police officer was very nice… he didn’t put handcuffs on me and he let me sit in the front seat with him. At the juvenile detention center, they put me in a cell for a few hours before bringing me out for an interview. At first they treated me pretty rudely… here is some young punk stealing cars… but once they heard my story, they were very sympathetic. They told me they wouldn’t send me home again, not to worry. They also told me that they didn’t want to see me stay there, as it wasn’t for a nice girl like me.

They arranged for me to stay in a state-run shelter called Serendipity. It was a regular house, but owned by the state. It was home to 11 kids ages 7-17. Our parents still had a say in what we were and were not allowed to do. For me, it was no visitors, no phone calls, no mail. I got mail anyway. It’s illegal not to give someone their mail.

My first night there, I was brought in at about 3am. I was led into a dark room and pointed at a bed. It took me a long time to fall asleep. In the morning, I woke up to the voices of a couple of other girls… I kept my eyes closed and pretended to still be asleep while I listened. they were discussing me and whether or not they should kick my ass. Fortunately it turned out that they thought I was a girl who had run away from the place a few days before and who had apparently seriously pissed everyone off.

Life in the shelter was very strange. We woke up early, ate breakfast, did our chores, then the day was very structured. There were study times (even though it was summer… they had one schedule and stuck to it year round) tv times, chore times, etc. After lunch we did our chores again, and once more after dinner. This meant that the floors got vacuumed three times a day. The windows were washed three times a day. The bathtub was scoured three times a day. Etc.

We did have some fun times, though. We formed friendships brought about by shared misery. We laughed and cried together. Every week we had an outing. Once it was roller skating. Another time it was going to the water park. My mom didn’t approve but it wasn’t something she was allowed to decide. Ha.

Throughout this time, I was regularly updated on the status of my case. My charge had almost immediately been reduced from Grand Theft Auto to Joyriding by the state. This really pissed off my mom.

My dad flew in from Florida to visit me, which was great. He took me out to dinner, took me to the water park with my best friend, and brought me back to hang out at his hotel room for large chunks of the day. He was in town for several days and it was like heaven. Again, my mom didn’t approve, but he had as much right to make these decisions as she did.

The maximum stay allowed in Serendipity is 30 days. I stayed for 35. After that I was put in a foster home for another 30 days, and then I flew to Florida to live with my dad until I turned 18. At this, my mom dropped the charges against me as she didn’t want to pay to fly me back for my trial.

2

Wow Opal. It sounds like you really managed to luck out… that could have gone much much worse. I’m glad for you.

I haven’t gotten really arrested. But the closest I’ve come is this:

I’ve just moved back to Sacramento after living in Montana for a year. I’m staying with my best friend, and we’re trying to get my mom settled in.

We’re downtown at the GA building, waiting for my mom. It’s boring, and smells like depression there, so we get in the car, and go park in an alleyway behind an empty building.

We find some broken bricks, and decided to use the back of the wall to play Ultra-Tic-Tac-Toe. Broken bricks worked quite well as chalk.

After about half an hour, I decide to walk the half block down the road to the GA building and see how mom is doing. Just as I get to the end of the alley, a cop car cuts me off, and a portly officer jumps out, saying something about “I’ve got this one!”.

The car zips down the garage towards my waiting friends.

Me: Black leather fedora, black trenchcoat, black jeans, combat boots, black t-shirt, long hair, 19… and a loaded .380 in the inner breast pocket of my coat. Long story, I’ll just say that my friends girlfriend didn’t want the gun in the house, so I was carrying it with me.

The cops tosses me against a fence and is snarling something about “tagging up the building”. He pats me down, and misses the gun!!! He sticks his hands in my coat pockets on the outside, but misses the pocket on the inside again.

I’m sweating bullets (not that you could tell… I’m very very calm in emergencies). The cop cuffs me and walks me down to the patrol car, where the other officer is reading my friends vitals into the dispatch.

It turns out, the cops had gotten a report of “gang taggers” in the alley, spray painting on the building. When they saw it was chalk, they relaxed. We volunteered to wipe off the chalk… which we did. The cops warned us, and left us there.

Now, 8 years later, I almost never go out armed anymore. Just too risky…

3

Summer of 1991. I’m sixteen, have taken my life’s savings (a little less than $1000) out of the bank, ridden the Greyhound cross country to California to work with Earth First!

I won’t go too much into the action we did, except to say that a couple of macho wanna-be-SEALs nearly got us all killed. There were thirty of us being chased by overweight cops and angry loggers through desolate clearcuts before noon. We spent the rest of the day playing cat-and-mouse with the Cops & Loggers. At one point, a truck came racing down a dirt road in the woods and swerved in an unsuccessful attempt to run over one of the activists. She dived into the ditch, barely missed getting hit.

We almost got out, too, except that some locals were waiting for us. They threatened to kick the ass of anyone who left before the cops arrived, and one of them punched a friend of mine in the head, knocking him out cold.

When the cops got there, they didn’t have enough evidence to hold anyone – not until six stragglers came out of the woods. Those six were charged with injunction tresspassing – a crime with a maximum penalty of a $10 fine.

I and five other folks went up to the cops, told them we’d been in the woods too, refused to give them our names or addresses.

They slipped the little zip-cords around our wrists, loaded us up in vans, and drove us the 45 minutes to the Humboldt County Jail. One of them, a young babyfaced cop, stuck his head in the back of the van and asked me how old I was.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m not going to provide any personal information about myself.”

He laughed, said over his shoulder to his partner, “Let’s let him steam in here for 15 minutes. He’ll be begging to give us his age.”

I adjusted in my seat, tried to get some sleep. It had been about 36 hours since I slept.

Awhile later, they took me out of the back of the van, let me sit on the concrete floor of the basement garage. A string of cops came through, trying to get me to tell them how old I was. One of them told me, leeringly, “There was another pretty boy in here a couple of weeks ago. When it came time to do his laundry, we saw that his underwear was covered in blood. He told us it was hemorrhoids, but do you believe that? I don’t.”

The babyface cop noticed I was trying to sleep, so he got out a bag of Doritos and, staring steadily at me, crunched them. Then he started opening and slamming the door to a police car. Then he started tapping his nightstick against the car. Tap. Tap. Tap.

I started laughing at that point, and he stopped.

They put me in solitary. In retrospect, they were doing just what they should have done: they could have gotten in real trouble for holding a minor in an adult jail, but they also could have gotten in trouble for putting an adult in juvenile hall. The previous year, they’d been sued for nearly $100,000 for shaving the heads of environmentalist protestors. They didn’t want another lawsuit.

The next morning, they took me to a succession of parole officers, counselors, and police, all of whom tried to get me to give up information, alternating between threats, sympathy, and contempt. Finally, just before we were to be arraigned, they took me and each of my cohorts into a room full of cops and told us that if we didn’t provide our full names and addresses to the police, we’d be charged with violation of California Code 142, subsection 8 (or something like that). When I asked to see the ordinance, they refused; so I refused to give them any information.

For the first time, I and my male cohorts were put in a holding cell together, and we spontaneously started singing the blues. One person made “BOM BOm Bom bom” noises, another person wailed, another person would chime in with a little couplet, we’d all laugh and keep singing. It was fantastic, until the cops yelled at us to shut up, and we did.

At the arraignment, we each pled innocent to the trespassing but provided our names, dates of birth, etc. The judge missed the fact that I was 16, but one of the cops was paying attention, and interrupted the judge and pointed out that I was a minor.

Everyone else went free while they put me in another holding room. The walls were covered with graffiti. Outside the door, I could hear the cops laughing about how much they wished they could just shoot us.

They put me in another car and took me to juvie hall. The people there were very nice to me – a couple of the guards told me that they fully supported what we Earth First!ers were doing, that if they had any say in it, I’d be free.

I spoke with my father back in North Carolina, told him where I was, told him that a local lawyer had agreed that I could be released into her custody if my father would agree. The guards didn’t like the idea: I was supposed to be released to a legal guardian, and an attorney my father had never met hardly counted. They left me to my own devices while they figured out what to do.

I could either join the other kids playing kickball and watching TV, they told me, or I could read in my own room. I took two or three books, and my copy of the juvenile hall rules, and retreated to my room.

The main thing I remember about the room was that there was no door handle on the inside. I looked at that door for a long time.

Right before lights out, one of the guards came in. He told me that because I’d been antisocial, I had a score of 2 for the day, and wouldn’t be allowed to use pencils. When I started to argue, he just told me to reread the juvie rules.

The next morning was school. They had me do a grammar and a math test, and when they’d finished grading them, the teacher told me in a hushed voice that nobody had ever scored so high on the tests before. She asked me what math I was studying.

“Numerology,” I said with a straight face. I had, after all, been reading a book by Aleister Crowley back at the EF! base camp. I explained that numerology was studying the specific properties of individual numbers, and asked if she had any books on that.

She didn’t think so, so I did individual study, making a grid with each number, the corresponding Tarot card, a one-word description of the number, and all the correspondences I could think of.

When it came time for sociology, I read anything I could find in their tiny library on juvenile justice in California. Turns out that kids are only supposed to enter the system for very serious or repeated crimes – not for injunction trespassing. I wasn’t supposed to be there, and they were desperate to get me out of there.

(And the other kids, when I talked with them, turned out to be just fine where they were. One of them had shot his mother in the belly with a shotgun, for example).

After a rousing game of kickball and a tense encounter with a kid whose dad was a logger, the guards told me everything had been worked out: my father had agreed that i could be remanded into the attorney’s custody, after having spoken with her on the phone.

I was given back my regular clothes, wished the best of luck by the guards, and set free.

Daniel

4

Over a summer one time I decided to talk a walk with a friend or two. At 2 am in the morning. That was as evil as my intentions were. The town’s quiet nice after dark when no one’s outside. Surreal, in a way. Something you should check out if you have the opportunity to, and you are 18 or older.

So anyways we found our ways near the area around the local high school when a cop drives up and starts giving us attitude. Yeah, he was your basic jelly doughnuts type. He held us, made me empty my backpack, which I carried a flashlight and (because I’m an idiot) an aerosal can I intended to use incase of trouble from some psycho-killer guy. And that’s the truth too.

His backup comes up. So we have to give our names and everything and he puts it in his computer system, calls us idiots. I’m trying to be as polite as I possibly can here, doing everything you’re supposed to do when around a cop. But that’s not helping it seems. I ask him if an apology and a sincere promise to never leave the home again would help (and I meant it too); his backup tells me to shutup.

They also tells me because of my age I’m “getting off light” and if I were any older I’d be sent downtown. I know from Daniel that’s not done in California, but I’m not sure about Texas law.

So we’re in the back of the cop car and my friend tells me she’s feeling a rush of adrenaline, I felt like vomiting. ‘Luckily’ another backup comes and the two backup officers are better than the first guy. They tell me that they won’t bust me for having a spray can (which can be used as vandalism, I find out) or for tresspassing (we were just passing through the area) but he will write us up for curfew violation. Turns out there’s a curfew in my area. Great.

I think one of the backup officers was in GREAT (Gang Related Education And Training, basically very similar to DARE, only not for little kids and aimed at the older ones). That was an interesting moment to find one of his kids was now being arrested by him.

So a month later I have to go downtown and meet with a judge. I basically plead guilty and pay the fine instead of doing community service. The fine was $11, but cour costs were $69. That was almost all the money I had at the time.

But the judge was very nice and sympathetic. I’d have smiled more if my knees weren’t about to break. A good guy, all around. I wish I remembered his name. But the experience still sucked.

Halloween. Seems Blackeyes hangs around with the wrong crowd sometimes. But his intentions are not malicious. Even if he engages in some hijinks while with the wrong crowd. After all, this is a town where it’s customary to TP a house and come by the next day to help in the clean up.

So Blackeyes wears Punk as a costume. Cameo pants, black shirt, hair dyed red and in something resemblign a mohawk, with some magic marker I added a bit of orange around my eyes for that fire look, and put some orange/yellow/red on my arms for flames. I looked pretty good in this costume. My ‘associates’ from the did not put as much detail into their costume. Say, Pat and Carlos the Mexican Immigrant (that comes important later, guess how) wore basically regular clothes.

And it was Pat’s idea that eggs be brought along. I had the job of carrying them in a backpack, along with a can of silly string (there’s no way silly string can be anything but harmless. Unless inhaled. But that never happens). I, being the harmless person I am, wanted to through the eggs at a wall and see them go splat, or at a person if they were a bad person and not wearing an elaborate costume. The year before’s Halloween was a night of unfortunate occurences involving myself being egged (it does not leave a large mess and stings a little bit on impact), so I figures no harm done basically.

We spend much of our time walking around, once we followed a pack of girls for a while because of an idea Pat had to harass them. Great. The plot foils itself and nothing becomes of it. Good. So when we finally get candy from a house we turn the corner onto a street and wait at the intersection debating where to go next. Lucky for us that was just as a cop car was making a turn at the intersection.

Seems some kids had been throwing eggs at cars. And we fit the description of young, white males, plus Carlos the Mexican Immigrant, and were in the area. We cover ourselves pretty well, she was about to let us go until the I’m Young and Fit But Still A Jerk type rolls up in backup. He searches us again. Naturally, I be as respectful as I know how to. Naturally, he doesn’t appreciate it.

My cohorts are being typical juveniles when with a cop which is not good. My costume does not help me at all either. I should have gone as the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz.

So he berates us, gives just a little bit extra attention to Carlos it seemed to us. Carlos had a Harvard T-shirt and white gloves, obvious to the cop he was using the gloves to throw eggs. In one of my pockets I had two bandanas because I was undecided if I should wear a bandana, and if I did, which one, so I brought both. Apparently that’s illegal too.

“Why would you have two bandanas? Do you like, collect them or something?!” He says “WTF not? It’s not illegal to have a couple of bandanas on you, you asshole. If you’re gonna have that attude why don’t you stop someone over for having a green car, or a hula dancer on the dashboard? If I have two bandanas obviously there’s a private reason for that, or maybe there isn’t, but it’s none of your damn business because it’s not illegal! There’s no possible fucking harm that could come from a couple of bandanas you fuck!” I think to myself. The man was verry disagreeable. But I tell him the story about being not sure which bandana I should wear. He seems suspicious. :rollseyes: :mad: :rolleyes: :mad:

Very forceably he makes me empty the contents of my backpack and we discover that: I have two trick-or-treat bags, both empty because we only went to one house, a can of silly string, and some eggs. Oysh the eggs. Yes, some hijinks were planned with the eggs, but throwing at cars? No. That would cross the line. So would throwing at anyone not in the age group who did not have it coming. But that’s the clincher.

ALSO there was two dozen eggs found in the area that I surely must know something about. I don’t. He doesn’t care.

When the female officer stopped us she had us empty our pockets and found nothing, but when the male officer came by she informed him (and us) that we would have had time to throw anything intothe bushes behind us. She points at the area, Male officer commanding me to find what it is I PunkAss threw. I don’t know what they’re talking about so I walk in the area behind the bushes. Oyup. That must mean I have something to hide back there too. Male officer checks that area and finds nothing, but they’re not polite about it. In the area the points too there is an egg it turns out. Great. Just awesome for Blackeyes.

I get accused of lying by the female officer and must very regretably tell her “why” I “lied” to her. It was a half truth in the way that what was once the truth became a lie because the policer officer said it was. Very peculiar.

My cohorts also sell me out to the cops too. They tell them that they sort of knew me from school and they did not plan on meeting me that night. Bull SHIT! I’m thinking. The egg idea was fucking YOURS, it was YOUR idea when and where to meet, the whole fucking plan was YOURS.

So it’s not good for yours truly. I even get accused of drug use and get a shiny light shown in my eyes. When I explain that all that is makeup for the costume, take a gander at what that explanation is called in the police community. Lie. But they do not pursue it much.

More chewing out by Male officer. He commands me to give him my name. I do. He says “WHAT?!” with ‘assertiveness’. I tell him again. “SPELL IT.” I do. More chewing. I don’t know how to act, it seems. I’m a bad kid, apparently. A thing or two about Carlos.

When you think about it, female officer was about to let us go until male offier showed up. Damnit. Maybe if I had remembered the Fourth amendment and figured since you have a right to not let the cop search your car without a warrant that the same right may applie to other personal belongings. But I didn’t. I should have. But I have a feeling he would decide I obviously had something to hide and would search me anyways. And bust me for more stuff. I would too weak in the knees to yell at him about being “an American… rights… you still have to respect them… I’m an American citizen… damnit…” for it to work anyways.

So in a way, the group did cover for itself pretty well. I got the wrap. All of it. After I was allowed to leave Pat told me they let him and Carlos go. Just fucking awesome. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

So that weekend I get jumped by some homophobic hoodlums, my knee bashed enough to give me a limp for nearly a month, and ‘stabbed’ in the arm. Gosh, given my experience with cops, who can tell me what good is going to come out of that situation?

5

Holy cow. Those are some interesting stories.

I’ve only almost been arrested once. I got out of trouble because the officer that was doing the busting was a friend of my mom’s. Basically, I went to a party with this yahoo redneck boy that I used date. We got there, I got pretty drunk, and right before we were going to leave, the SWAT team showed up. Turns out that some of the “friends” of my date had been threatening some people earlier that day with illegal weapons.

Luckily, the head of the SWAT team was my mom’s friend, so he just tossed me in the back of his cruiser and drove me home. I have never been so scared in my life. He told me that I had to tell my mother what happened, and that I wouldn’t be mentioned in the arrest records because he thought I could end up being a good person if I straightened up and quit hanging out with idiots. I promised to tell her what happened, went in the house and went right to bed.

I didn’t tell her until almost 10 later. Hey, I told her, didn’t I? :wink:

6

When my son Jock was two, I came home late after having a few brews at the Twenty Tank, in S.F. I get home feeling a little tipsy, and my wife tells me Jocks been coughing really bad and needs some cough syrup. It’s a little before l1 PM, and the closet thing open was a liquor store a couple of blocks away. Now I lived in East Oakland and most of the liquor stores served as a stand around point for the dealers and crack heads looking for dealers so I put my Asshole-Stick* in my coat pocket before setting off to the store.

I get the cough syrup and start heading back. At the corner I stopped to light a smoke (I don’t smoke in the house) as I was doing this a guy comes up and asks for a light. So I give him a light too, just as police cars start pulling up behind me. I go on about my business when this cops runs up behind me and tells me to stop. I put my hands up, and he asks what I’m doing there.

I explain about picking up cough syrup (which I have in my coat pocket). He asks me if he can search me and I say sure. He finds the cough syrup my wallet, then my Asshole Stick. That’s when things tool a turn for the worse. He says he needs to handcuff me but that I’m not under arrest yet. As he putting me in the car, I see another cop arresting the guy I gave the light too, there’s also a half dozen other people who’d been standing outside the store getting arrested.

The cop is talking to another officer, then gets I the car and tells me I’m being arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and possession of cocaine. What? I don’t have any drugs. The cop tells me the other guy had drugs an that he says he got them from me, that and the weapon gives them cause. Oh shit, I’m thinking, oh shit, oh shit.

The cops starts heading down to E14th and the whole time he’s asking me questions amd I’m answering truthfully. The he asks for my Pin/Vin(?) number. I tell him I don’t know what he’s talking about. It’s obvious he doesn’t believe me but he drops it.

When we get to the station they put me in a holding tank, and then later they read me the charges and put me in the felony tank. Before that they give me a phone call so I call my wife and tell her what’s happened.

Now I’m in the felony tank. I’m scared shitless, and nearly everyone around me looks like they could kick my ass as easily as scratching their nuts. Trying to tsalk to the guards was just asking for one of them to tell you to shut-up at best, or an opening for a smart-assed remark. I lay down and try to sleep. I need to use the bathroom but can’t, because the bathrooms are laid out like for entertainment. There’s a huge window in front of the commodes, which you can see from all over the room.

I toss and turn and the next thing I know it’s breakfast. They chain our feet and arms and we go downstairs where they unchain us and we eat, the reverse on the way back. Then they turn the pay phones back on. I wait and eventually I get my chance and call home. My wife’s called a lawyer who apparently did some checking. My wife says he said whatever I do don’t bail out. The DA will look at my arrest sheet and throw it out. If I bail, I’ll be looking at hearing after hearing. In short be patient, luck is on my side.

Reluctantly I wait. I’m due some luck I think maybe he’s right, I’ll just have to wait till after the DA gets in and I’m home. Luck was coming allright, Bad Luck.

The same night I was getting arrested, Oakland was having it’s first night of the Festival of the Lake. As it turns out, the last one that’ll be the last one held there. Why you ask, well here comes the reason in the guise of 70 felony arrests. When I first got to the Felony Tank, there were about fifteen of us. By lunch there were 40, by 3 PM 60. I’m watching the clock and losing hope. Five comes and goes, and now I know, I’m going to spend the weekend in Jail, with these criminals. Oh shit.

Speaking of shit, I still haven’t gone. I keep trying to work up the nerve; the others don’t seem to care. But I just can’t. My existence is limited to waiting for the payphone, watching whatever the guards will put on TV, and eating. I’ve more or less stopped being scared and am just plain miserable.

Sunday morning I try to use The Bathroom, as I’ve come to think of it. I sit down and look at the floor and try to imagine, that the 60 or so rapist, dealers, killers and thugs can’t see me. Apparently my bowels can’t be fooled so easily. Nothing’s getting in or out here buddy. By Sunday evening I’m crying and not giving a shit who sees my I want to go home to my wife, my kid, my bathroom with a door.

Monday starts out with more of the same. At 10 we’re watching Jenny Jones, when a guard calls my name. I’m being released, all charges dismissed. How do people go to jail over and over again?

*I’m not sure what the real name for this thin is, it was a metal tube that you could flick your arm, and it would be become longer, with a spring wound smaller tube around it. If anyone n=knows what it’s called let me know.

7

Link
:o

8

Is that real?!

9

I accidentally beat the shit out of some guy in a bathroom at a baseball game. He was an undercover cop. I did 6 months on work release.

10

Excuse me for asking, but how do you accidentally “beat the shit” out of someone?

11

Opal, it’s a real document what’s been altered to reflect my username. And I embellished that last item in evidence there for yucks.

12

“oops”

13

It takes a lot of beer, and a horrible attitude.

Ironically?, we’ve become friends, and I’m the godfather of his first born. Go figure.

14

Yeah, it was a bit of bummer. Neglected to consider that it was grad weekened and it was impossible to go anywhere without being stopped at DUI roadchecks. And that vehicle fairly reeked, believe me. Have you ever been totally covered in resin after spending twelve hours picking weed? No? Um… me neither. But I’m sure anyone who had couldn’t have expected to be any stinkier than we were.

15

I have too many arrests to pick from, so I’ll tell the story of the closest I’ve ever been to being in jail.

Summer of '98. I was a greedy little bastard and thought the world revolved around money. I would do almost anything for more cash. I had a friend (we’ll call her C) who had plenty of cash from working, allowance, etc. She bought cd’s all the time, and I think I decided that she wouldn’t notice if I “borrowed” a couple to sell. Over the course of a month, I stole about twenty cd’s and sold them to a used cd store.

One night, C was visiting one of her friends. I was cruising around with another friend of mine and we saw C’s car parked at a curb. Nobody else was around, so I got into C’s car and stole some more cd’s and a couple of movies. I went with my other friend back to his place and stashed the stolen stuff there.

C realized what had happened the next time she went out to her car and called the cops. She knew it was me. I was visited at my mom’s by the cops and questioned over the next couple of days. My whereabouts the night of the burglary were “known” by then, so the cops decided to visit the friend who had been with me. He ratted out everything and turned all the stuff over to the cops.

One particular cop wanted to bust me really bad, I think. He came to my mom’s to arrest me. When he told me that friend2 had turned over the stolen material, I kind of sighed and fessed up to everything. The cop handcuffed me and put me in the back of his car for a ride to juvie. On the way, he called juvenile hall to make sure that there was room for me. There wasn’t and nobody could reach the head of probation to release another kid. The cop arresting me took me home and left me in my mom’s custody. I think he was pretty disappointed.

A couple of weeks later I got a letter in the mail telling me to meet with a probation officer. I was being offered diversion because this was my “first” offense (it wasn’t, but that’s a whole other story). The p.o. told me that I’d better accept the offer because I would be charged with several felonies and a few misdemeanors if I didn’t. I accepted the offer.

16

Yeah that last item was what I was questioning :wink:

17

Well, I didn’t go to jail for this one but it was sorta close and it is an interesting story.

One night when I was 18 I went out with my friend Mike and the Jeffs, Jeff B and Jeff C. We went out in Mikes little Toyota. Mike was driving, I was in the shotgun seat and the two Jeffs’ were in back. We were sitting in the right lane at a red light waitng to turn. There was a ‘No Right Turn on Red’ sign up. So we were sitting there and the guy behind us starts honking. The Jeffs turned around and gave the car behind us the finger.

The light turns green and we take the right. We start going up the street at about 40, which was the speed limit, in the center lane. The next thing I know the car that was behind us was next to us and the guy is yelling at us to pull over. The guy, who was driving a Caddy, flashed a badge out the window and was screaming that he was a cop and we had to pull over. There were three other guys in the car with him. There was no way in hell we were going to pull over for some schmuck in a Caddy. Mike hit the gas. The Caddy then started tailgating us. At the next light Mike took a left. The Caddy stayed with us. The Caddy started to pull up on the left side of the car. Mike then took a right onto a side street at high speed. In fact we were going so fast that the left front tire got ripped off the rim. So we pulled over and grabbed our ‘Attitude Readjustment Tools’ (pool cues for me and Mike, bats for the two Jeffs) as we liked to call them.

By the time we got out of the car the Caddy pulled up behind us. Four guys get out holding guns and badges. Being pretty smart for our age we all dropped our weapons. It turned out that they were really cops. Anyway, they searched us and the car, put us in cuffs and then called in for backup. Here’s where things got strange. When they called for backup they called for a cop over the radio by name. I had dealt with cops before and knew that wasn’t the way they did things. A little while later a cop in a patrol car shows up. All the cops gave us a really hard time and confiscated our ‘weapons’ even though we had pool and basball equipment in the car. After giving us shit for a while they said they were going to let us off easy. They watched us change the tire and let us go.

We went to Mikes house and told Mike’s Dad what had happened. Mike’s Dad went ballistic, not because of what we did but because of what the cops did. Mike’s Dad piled us into the car and went to the nearest police sub-station. He yelled and screamed untill he got the head of the watch, a Sargent. We told the story to the head cop and he went ballistic.

Fast Forward one month. It turns out the 4 guys in the Caddy were cops but they were off duty. They had no reason to pull us over. They were all rookies and had been out drinking that night. The cop in the squad car was their boss. Three of the guys in the Caddy got suspended and had to under go counseling. The driver of the Caddy and the patrol officer were fired.

Slee

PS, ** DanielWithrow**, numerology is not math. :slight_smile:

18

I was near arrested for attempted theft.

Coworker and I are sent out to a repo lot to make keys to a couple of cars. So we get the gate unlocked and I start making keys, Todd gets the van and runs off to Chick-fila for lunch.

A concerned citizen calls about someone prowling around the cars. It must have been a very slow day since 3 cop cars showed up and all excited to handcuff me.

It damn near took Todd an hour to get back with the food and for them to run my ID and verify I worked for a locksmith company.
By the way Opal or anyone… is there a link to the ask the cop thread? I cannot find it and the search engine is telling me to go get… well do things to myself I would rather not do.
thank,
Osip

19

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147494

Ask the Cop, page 1

20

Number one:
We decided to rewire the PA system in my highschool to play a tape instead of the regular morning anouncments, and move the vice principles office into the bathroom,and some other stuff. We had it planned out beutifully. We recorded the tape, we had 8 people, with Walkie Talkies, so that we could all talk to each other. Several were lookouts, going to be station around the school and on the roof. I aquired a master key to the school, and made everyone a copy. We forgot to put batteries in the radios. We set off a silent alarm. I looked out the front window of the school and saw cop cars everywhere. I ran out the back door, and a cop pointed a gun at me and said one more step and your dead, son. They got all but one of us. I spent the night in jail, and seriously pissed off my parents. Charges were dropped after they realized we didnt steal or break anything.

Number two.
A bit more serious. In fact, this one wrecked my life. The police back in the mid to late 80’s had a problem, they had a brand new shiney gang unit in fort worth, but not enough gangs to justify it. So they, decided that all the punks were one big gang. We were getting pulled over, harrassed, threatened by these wanna be crash cops. They started harrasing one of my friends and former roommates, investigating him for, among other things, witchcraft!..This is Texas we are talking about here.

So one day, me and some of my friends decide we want to go out shooting. A friend of ours had some land up north of town, and so we put our guns in the car, and went up there to do some plinking. We get to her land(her parents, actually), and turns out shes not there. So we start to leave, we pull over onto the side of the road because we see someone coming and thought it might be her. Turns out it was a couple of inbreeder jock types. They pull around us and start flipping us off. My friends flip them off back, and wanna go after them, but I tell them no, the last thing we wanna do is get busted in redneck ville for trashing a couple of locals, so we turn around and get back on the freeway, but not until they decide to turn around and come back after us. We get on the freeway, and they are gaining on us. Again, I dont want to get into it with them, so I pick up a shotgun and as they are trying to run us off the road, I show them that I have a gun. They back off, and we go home(I never pointed the gun at them). Thats was that, I thought.

A month or two goes by, and I come home to find that my best friend had stuck my handgun to the side of his head and blown his brains all over the kitchen. I tottally lose my shit. The cops show up, and as usually are down right rude, they accuse me of being a white supremist(my friend was black), they accuse us of being gang members. Meanwhile my best friend in the whole world is laying there in a pool of goo that used to be his brain, still twitching. They take my picture, and check my hands to see if I have fired a gun. They start asking me about my former roomates artwork he had up on the wall. I ask them why he wants to know about that, and he says its because it is wierd, and that they like to keep track of wierd people. I told the cop that he didnt need to know that then, and he told me to tear ass out of there. He goes to the landlord and asks her who the former roomate is, and she tells him. He gives my picture, and the roomates name to the gang unit. My life goes to shit.

So now, my best friend is dead, the girl I had been seeing tells me that same night that she wants to start dating girls instead(I knew she was Bi, but I’m a monogomous sort, so we parted friends), and then I get this nock on the door. In this neighborhood, I normally opened the door with my gun in my hand, but it was in the police property room…thank God. I open the door a crack, and these two Don Johnson wannabe guys are standing there. They ask me who I am, and if I would step out and talk to them. I ask them what do they want. They show me a badge, and tell me they have a warrant for my arrest, for Aggravated Assault(a felony). I ask them who I assaulted, they refuse to tell me. I invite them in, ask them if I can get my boots. They come in, look around, let me get my boots, make small talk, tell me that they are going to kill me if I resist…All in a perfectly polite tone. I ignore the remark, remain polite, and walk with them out to their car. They are, of course, gang unit…They take me into the gang unit office…ask me a bunch of questions about my former roomate. I mention that he had filed a complaint with the ACLU and the FBI, they got really pissed off about that, and threw me in jail. They refused to tell me any details about why I was arrested, refused to take my handcuffs off, even to go to the bathroom. They didnt figure that I had family, and figure they could let me sit in jail for a few days, and then I would give them dirt on my roomate. My parents wired the money from hawaii and bailed me out.

I did security for a living back then, and in exchange for my rent. The second I was arrested, I lost my license to do security, so I was unemployed, and homeless. I slept on peoples couches for a while, worked a few odd jobs, until two years later, the case comes to trial. It took the judge two minutes to throw out the case and find me not guilty. The redneck in question made a fool of himself on the witness stand, all but admitting that he was trying to run me off the road because me and my friends looked differant and didnt belong in his town.

The sad thing is, the bastards won. They new I would never be convicted. When they questioned my friend who was driving the car, they told him they thought the other guys were lying about the whole thing. But they also knew, that if they arrested me, that I would have to spend a crap load for a lawyer, that I would lose my job(they rubbed my nose in that one on the way to the jail, as well as making jokes about my friends suicide and his wake). Innocent until proven guilty my ass.