That's a Long Arm You've Got there, Mister!

In honor of our progenitor getting served (and sued)...

FOCUS: Tell us about your awesomest/funniest/scariest encounters with law enforcement. If it's foreign law enforcement, all the better.

 

When I was 18 I was visiting a friend in LA and we decided a day trip to Tijuana would be a good idea.

About 10 minutes after we cross the border we stopped at a convenience store and the 4 of us each bough one beer. Evidently it's illegal in Tijuana to walk on the street with a glass bottle (illegal for four gringos anyway) because about 30 seconds after we walked out of the store two cops in an old Chevy Nova pulled up and crammed all 4 of us in the backseat.

We asked what was going to happen and they told us we would go to the station and pay a fine. We then asked if we could pay the fine now and the cops looked at each other and nodded. We each stuffed a twenty through the grill and they dropped us off in front of a bar where we stayed for the better part of the day trying to teach a Mexican bartender how to make a mind eraser.

So my one and only run in with the law was resolved by bribery.

 

In high school, my sister and a group of her friends rented a motel room for a drinking party. I stopped by for a drink, and after a few drinks, two of my sister's friends got into a fistfight over whether one of them had been the Gerber baby. Having had drinking parties at this motel before, I knew the manager would be calling the police at any moment. There was a Sheetz across the street, and I went over to get a coffee and sober up a little before I got behind the wheel.

I walk out of Sheetz, and the police have already surrounded the room. Someone inside was holding the door closed and the plice are getting pissed, so I take that as my cue to get out of there. I get in my car and start to drive off, but the police stop me and ask what I'm doing. Without thinking, I tell them my sister called me to pick her up and I had been getting a coffee because it was 3 in the morning. I have no idea why they believe me, but they let me get my sister and one of her friends out of there, drive off smelling like beer, and completely dodged underage drinking charges.

 

When I was 20 I worked at a pizza place, on my way home I was eating while driving, dropped my sub, swerved and got pulled over. The cop said I wreaked of pot and made me do a field sobriety test. I must have done well enough because he started lightening up on me a bit, but under the gun like that, on the highway at 11PM with headlights in my eyes I felt like I was fucking everything up, I was certain he was going to bust me for DUI. He kept insisting he didn't care how I did on the field test and that he KNEW I had been smoking pot because of how I smelled.

Mind you it had been about a year since I was even in the same room as someone that was smoking pot, but this guy was so insistent I started questioning myself.

Finally his superior shows up to arrest me. He talks to me for a few seconds, looks at me cross eyed, turns to the other cop and says "this kid smells like meatball marinara, not pot" and lets me go.

 

I've had a few run ins with the law this is one of my favorites-

This took place in Athens, Ohio (Ohio University). The night was August 3, 2007. At midnight that evening Scott (my brother) was turning 21, so we had been pregaming pretty heavily for his first legal visit to the bars of Court Street. At 11:55 Scott and I set out for the bar. I opened up my tab, and let him put anything on it that he wanted to. After about the 8th shot I began to black out.

When I unblacked out, I came to handcuffed and sitting on a curb roughly three down from Scott's house. He was sitting on the curb next to me also handcuffed. There were 7 cop cars. I thought we had done something terrible. Eventually one of Scott's roommates came down to talk to the cops, they released us and we walked home. In the morning, the roommate explained to us what happened.

Apparently we were walking home, and I tripped and fell into the bushes. A cop was lurking in the shadows and detained us for being drunk and disorderly. After being handcuffed I was too drunk to sit on the curb, so I laid on the ground. I kept begging for them to let my brother go, and arrest me. One more alcohol offense and he got kicked out of school. Anyway, the cop thought how drunk we were was comical, so he called his buddies to come see the state we were in. They let us go only because it was his birthday, and we had almost made it home.

 

I've had two:

1) Pulled over at the border due to drug dogs discovering a roach of weed below my back-seat. At the time I didn't even blaze - It fell out of my friend's bag when I drove her home the night before. It didn't help that I was traveling with my friend who was 10 years older than I was, so the situation did probably look very suspicious. I was cuffed, strip-searched and had to give them my finger-prints. They searched the car, found nothing else and by some weird stroke of luck we were allowed to still enter the United States.


2) I got a drunk-in-public ticket when I foolishly shut-down the power at a gas-station. My girlfriend at the time, my friend Andy and I were drunk and the girlfriend had gone into the station to use the bathroom. Andy and I were standing outside the door and we noticed this large red button beside the door. There was no sign or anything explaining what the button did, so I drunkenly decided to press it.

Bad idea.

All of the fuel-pumps shut down and everything went dark. We ran like hell and made it within two minutes of the girlfriend's apartment before the police saw us and flashed the sirens. The cops were actually really legit. They sat us down, took our names and made my friend pour out his drink. I expressed genuine remorse for my stupidity, and the cops must have appreciated my sincerity. They gave me a drunk-in-public ticket and told me that because there was no sign beside the button the gas station had no right to officially press any charges. The cops did tell me that my stunt cost the Gas Station at least $1000 worth of business though. Ooops.

 

I've got many, many interactions with Leos but two stand out to me.

The first was when I was driving my decrepit volvo wagon thru the downtown area looking for a laundromat. I think I was in the process of moving as well so the wagon was filled with crap. I drive past the address and without thinking really, rip a U-turn in the middle of the street. When your car is a piece of shit, has bald tires, and is over loaded it can make a terrible noise when you make sudden turns. The resulting racket alerted a police officer to my presence and in order to make sure I stopped he threw his bicycle in front of my car. As some would say, "Please raise your hand if you have ever been pulled over by a bike cop."

The second was recent and was my first leo experience in sobriety. I'm driving my brother's cherokee with Texas plates north of Houston and I see a state trooper setup so I move over from the left lane to the right and slow down to 60. I get sorta confused about the speed limits in Texas, sometimes they are 55 or 70 or 65 at nite. The trooper pulls out behind me then matches my speed and both of the troopers stare at me for a good minute. Then they pull behind me with the lights on and I pull over. I am seriously sweating not because I'm drunk or have anything illegal on me. No, I'm sweating because my lisc was revoked in 2007 because of a DWI and I never took care of it. Yeah, I shouldn't be driving. I know that and I don't when I'm home. Alcoholic logic at its best.

Well, the two troopers ask me to step out of the car, to remove my hat & shades, and begin to question me like the common criminal I once was. They seemed to think that I was running meth up from Houston and they asked me the same questions over and over again. They asked me if I've ever done meth. Yes I say proudly ! I am a drug addict and alcoholic in recover and I've been clean and sober for 21 months ! I've also (insert nervous pro good living babble here). After about 20 minutes or so it occurs to me that I'm wearing an AA shirt and the trooper tells me he is going to run my SS# for any warrants and whatever else they look for when they do that kinda stuff. After ten very, very, very long minutes he comes over to me and asks me why my lisc had expired in 08 ? He also asks me if it was the police that arrested me for the DWI because there wasn't any record of that. I zip off some bullshit excuse about my state's registry probably making a mistake.

He gives me a warning about following another vehicle too close and lets me go. The warning was an official looking computer printed form so I know that the Texas Department Of Saftey knows that I don't have a lisc and I'm driving in their state. Perhaps lisc expiry in Texas is different and that it didn't come up as revoked. All I know is that I was wicked fucking lucky and arrived home to bring my nephew to his lacrosse game.

 

Why hasn't dixiebandit posted here yet? I thought they had internet in the clink.

 

I've had 3 LE encounters:

1. Making an illegal lane change exiting the Holland Tunnel from NYC into NJ, right into a DWI checkpoint, at 4:30 am on my way home from a party in Brooklyn. I had been drinking and smoking pot and hash all night. All the cop did was ask me if I knew changing lanes was illegal (which I did, but explained I knew I had to get in the right lane and wasn't sure how close my exit was--which was BS), scanned the inside of my car with his flashlight looking for open containers/empties, then asked me where I was going, then told me to be more careful next time. Had he pulled me out of the car, I would have failed any FST. Lucky.

2. Speeding ticket on Interstate 80 in NJ on my way to visit my sister at Penn State. Yeah, they really did enforce the 55 mph speed limit on the interstates before it went to 65.

3. And my favorite: County Sheriff's office providing me with transportation from the psych ward at the county hospital to a private psychiatric hospital. Deputy was very nice. No cuffs, gave me smokes, let me smoke them in the squad car, asked me how I was doing. She even offered to stop at a convenience store if I wanted to get some sundries before bringing me in. I said no, but asked if she would turn the siren and lights on, so I got to cross that one off my bucket list.

 

The only time I have ever had a cop talk to me is once when I was "loitering" outside an elementary school when I was in 6th grade. I know, I'm a regular badass. So you guys are going to have to settle for my friends story, who we'll call "B", which happened like 3 weeks ago.

He was back in his hometown and partying with some friends. It was around 2 oclock in the morning and they were all shithoused walking around the streets. As it was described to me, there was some sort of police checkpoint for cars, to make sure there were no drunk drivers/catch drunk drivers and they were walking towards it. Suddenly one of B's friends decides to kick over a trash can, which naturally gets the cops attention. They yell for the group to stop, and two of the cops get on their bikes and head for the group.

Now, I must break here to describe B. He is not fat persay...but he certainly isn't in shape anymore. It is like a small pillow of 25 lbs or so fat was sewn onto his stomach, and we give him shit for it a lot of the time because of how much he likes to complain about it.

His friends scatter, because they are used to dealing with the police, and B follows them a couple steps behind. They all run up to a fence, and all of the other 5 friends manage to jump the fence quite easily, with the police bearing down on them. B on the otherhand, is the one person who can't make it over the fence, and the cops pull him down, throw him on the ground and arrest him. As B was describing this to me, he said the cop was laughing at the fact that he couldn't make it over the fence and actually apologized for arresting him. So B was taken and booked or whatever they do at the police station, and he called his friends to come pick him up. This is where the story picks up.

Now, all of his friends are drunk or on a combination of drugs, so they come together and try to pick the most sober person to go to the police station to pick B up. This ends up being Gary, who I've met and can say first hand, is a dumb mother fucker. This is the guy that does coke and whips out his penis at parties, makes C-'s in community college, and just doesn't do much overall. He shows up to pick B up and they head back home. As they are leaving, a cop car pulls out from station behind them...and Gary freaks out since he has a number of pills hidden in the car and for some reason thinks B had a deal and set him up for the cops. Gary puts the pedal to the floor and starts driving away from the cops with B in the car.

As he speeds away the cop notices and puts the lights on and follows them. Gary runs two red lights and takes a couple of illegal turns and things trying to get away, before he hits a dead end and the cop orders both of them out of the car. It turns out the same cop that had caught B earlier was the same guy in this cop car...and was amazed that B was the one in the car. They both get arrested and brought back to jail, where Gary gets breathalized and a DUI, and they both get resisting arrest charges.

So, because of Gary's stupidity B ends up with additional charges, and he almost got kicked out of school. Gary might face jail time.

Gotta love my friends.

 

This one time in college? I had been over at a buddies house doing bong hits and had returned to my dorm to have an open door nap because the weather was good. I was awakened some time later by the rapping on the door of two Upuds peering in at my stoned ass on the bed. "We're looking for Nitwit."

After informing them that I was Nitwit they informed me that they had a warrant for my arrest for failure to appear on a traffic citation; whereupon I smugly informed them that this was impossible because I didn't have a car.

"We have the ticket right here. It say's here you have a Peugot...uuhh, bicycle?"

Well, it turns out that I had gotten a ticket for running a red light on my bike a few weeks earlier and had blown it off. Not good.

"Yea, I've got that."
"You need to come with us then."

Then I remembered the just purchased bag of weed in my pocket.

"Wait, I've got to crap and I'm not doin' it on a jail toilet."

After exchanging a look between them, they agree.
"OK, just hurry up."

I went into the bathroom that I shared with my roommate and the two dudes on the other side and opened the door to inform them that I was going to jail after my shit and to come bail me out. By that time I really did have to shit and after leaving the suite door cracked plopped down in front of it to poop. I pulled the weed out of my pants and took aim. The cops were looking in the door on the other side every few seconds so I had to time the throw between looks. After a respectable flick through the crack that set the bag gently down in the other room I saw a hand shoot out and grab it. Then I wiped my ass and went to jail.

Then there was that time I talked my way out of jail and got a ride home by the police after taking some acid with some buddies and getting picked up for crawling around on the dome top of a state museum; but that's a different story.

 

Not in the last few years have I had an encounter with an LEO but back when I was about 12-15 I used to ride one of my dirt bikes on the road all the time. I can think of atleast 6 times when the cops tried to pull me over, but Id just rip through a corn field and ride the trails home.

The closest I ever got caught though was when an OPP suv actually followed me in to the bush. Luckly I knew the layout of the farm I was ripping through, so I took that OPP to one of the tractor trails on the outskirts of a bean field. The ruts were about 2 feet deep and it just rained so you couldnt see them, so I rode just outside of them. The OPP suv tried to make it through and got stuck right up to the axles. The farmer ended up pulling him out.

 

This past summer I had a job in Austria. Don't ask how I got said job. It's a long story. Anyway...

Austrians take their traffic laws rather seriously. As a nation where every licensed driver is legally mandated to attend a driving school, they are understandably sticklers for good driving. One of their biggest peeves is the integrity of the passing lane; in other words the lane farthest to the left. This lane is only to be used for undercutting the middle and right lanes when traffic is going too slow. If the other two lanes are clear, you are legally prohibited from using this lane. The same law exists here in the States, of course. But there has been many a time when I've absentmindedly driven in the left lane without getting pulled over, usually because I get so focused during hard traffic that I fail to notice whether the other lanes have actually decongested.

So there I am in Austria, driving quite fast in the left lane. I've just emerged from a traffic bottleneck, but I'm staying in the left lane because I'm in a road-trance. The car is going quickly so I'm not slowing anybody down. All of a sudden, the noise of a motorcycle engine starts buzzing somewhere behind me. I glance in the rear-view and see a small bike with the words "POLIZEI" printed on the windshield. And that's all I see. Because after that split second the cop veers into the center lane, guns ahead, and drops in front of me before cutting his speed in half.

It took every bit of my reflexes to slam the fucking brakes. I was literally inches away from sending the guy a) through the median or b) into my front seat. Shaken up and pissed off, I switched into the center lane and did my best to look pissed off. He gave me the Austrian hand sign for "you're an idiot" and rode away.

To be fair, I was breaking the law. But come the fuck on! He could have easily pulled me over or something. I'd rather he have given me a ticket than try to...y'know...MURDER me.

Fucking autobahn.

 

I've been in jail four times, twice for simple overnights and twice it was in county jail, which sucks (but it's not quite actual prison).

It sucks. Everything about it sucks. There is no redeeming quality whatsoever about jail, no lesson learned, no great stories to tell. Just paranoia, violence and the meanest people you never even thought you could imagine. Hygene that would gag a Brazilian pimp. One day feels like two weeks. 18 hours in your cell a day. I was beaten by a group who stuffed books into pillow cases and jumped me.

It FUCKING SUCKS. I'll never truly forgive myself for it, and though it I'm long past that phase of my life it will always be one of my darkest, most dreaded memories. Don't do it, stay in school kids.

 

Man,ome of you have had shitty experiences with the boys in blue. On the other hand, we deal with some real shitty people. I never had a run in with the law growing up. Good thing I kept my nose clean, or I would have never got to do this.

 

Last night.

I was out with my rugby team for a round of Halloween liver pounding. We had been drinking since the end of our match at 5pm and made our way downtown around 10. I pulled out the inflatable ostrich suit as my potentially offensive costume of choice:



Also in the group we had Indiana Jones, three diapered baby cherub angels, Yosemite Sam (complete with hat and handlebars), a fat Chilean Miner and two members of the Russian Women's Olympic Weightlifting Team (both guys in case you're wondering).

I got shmishmammered on (insert hearty brag about my unparalleled drinking ability) and decided that based on the overwhelmingly positive reaction from everyone in sight, I was king of the world. This automatically made me better than the groups of cops standing smugly on the street corners. Walking between bars, I thought it would be hilarious to sneak up behind a group of officers and poke one in the ass with my inflatable ostrich beak while making ostrich mating calls (they sounded a lot like turkeys, but whatever). The first group of officers thought I was hilarious and one stopped to pose for a cell phone picture from a fellow officer. The second group didn't find me as funny.

I snuck up behind a group of three police and gave the mating call while prodding a female officer in the ass. She whirled around and I grabbed the ostrich and scolded him harshly for his lack of manners. She almost fell on the ground laughing. One of the male officers was less than impressed. He grabbed me from behind and told me to "Fuck off before you get a beatdown." I thought he was funny and gobbled at him. He reached for his baton and I realized he wasn't joking. One of the cherubs jumped between us and talked the officer down for a few minutes while Yosemite and one of the Russian Lifters dragged me a half a block away. One of the officers must have called for backup because two squad cars came screaming around the corner and four more officers jumped out of the car with their hands on their batons and handcuffs. Yosemite pushed me into an alleyway and I somehow managed to sneaky waddle a few blocks to safety. I found out later that they were dead set on arresting me for disorderly conduct, public intoxication and assault to a police officer before my teammate talked them down for a good fifteen minutes and promised they wouldn't see me again that night.

Never, ever again.

 

I'm still a little bitter from the time I was arrested and the cops forcibly obtained a DNA sample from me. I politely objected (at the time, cops were only allowed to take DNA samples for serious felonies, not simple <.1g possesion) and the cop sent his partner out of the room and told me he'd smash my face into the wall and charge me with assaulting a police officer if I didn't consent to the sample. Was it a bullshit threat? Sure. Was it extremely effective on an 18yr old kid? Yep.

My personal favourite though was power walking away from the cops in Russia. We were street drinking and didn't have our passports on us (because the cops confiscate your passport and then charge you exorbitant bribes to return it) and the cops showed up. Not having your passport on you earns you a night in a russian prison. Dilemma. We were maybe 200 metres from our hostel, but running from the cops in Russia is a good way to get shot or at least beaten.So, we... power walked. As they got closer to us, we sped up, repeatedly, but we tried to do it in the least obvious fashion. It was like something out of a Monty Python skit. We rounded the corner to our hostel, and had some of the tensest moments in my life frantically buzzing and begging to be let in immediately as the cops were maybe 25-30m back and shouting. My brother let us in, we shut the door and waited in agonizing silence, praying for them not to see the little door leading upstairs.

Fucking Russia. We were later incredibly glad to see the police arrive at the same hostel when some staggeringly drunk Russian chick went nuts trying to alternately caress my friends hair / smash her with a glass bottle. At 7am.