Yo you idiots (yeah we're on casual terms now). Today is National Law Day. Spoiler I know our favorite felon @dixiebandit69 has been there and done that, but what about you others? DUI? robbed a liquor store while hopped up on meth? Now is your moment to shine. The most I've gotten was a speeding ticket in a school zone which was nixed from my record after traffic school. I was exhausted and not paying attention on my way to work and got stopped and chewed out by a very angry deputy who looked exactly like my kindly infectious diseases professor. Being May 1st it is also May Day. While looking for May Day beverages I came across this beauty: May Day Pie It's on the Serious Eats food site so I trust it is goddamn delicious. It's a nut and bourbon sweet pie. I'm out of nuts or I'd be trying this out pronto. Try it out and let us know how it goes. Happy Friday you idiots.
Most I ever got was charged with harassment ( I think ) after a fistfight with a co-worker when I was 19. He was a thirty something year old man. He came at me, so I was advised to press charges. In turn, he did the same against me. Our court date was the same night and time, and the look on his face when I showed up with the attorney my Mom worked for was priceless. John, the attorney, told me to just let him handle it. I was called up, John said I'd drop the charges if the other guy would. Other guy was called up, judge asked him if that sounded okay to him. He agreed, judge made us shake hands, and out the door we went. I saw him years later, we had a good laugh over it.
When I was in high school, an acquaintance of mine broke into the email account of a local businessman. It was basically silly kid hijinks - he didn't do anything with the account information. But a few of us were using a shared dial-up internet account. A few weeks after it happened, a detective showed up at my house and started questioning me. I was totally unprepared and confused. I had nothing to do with the account hack, but when you're young and taken off-guard it's super confusing. Even though this detective already had a confession from the guy who did it, and the logs showed that I was not online at the time of the hack, and I was literally in a school full of people when the hack occurred... I was stuttering and the guy was hammering away at me, telling me I was lying, and I'm pretty sure I said or would have said enough to get in serious trouble. My dad came home, was horrified, told the detective to get the fuck out of his house, and nobody would be communicating with them except through a lawyer. It was a serious lesson that the right to remain silent isn't just for guilty people. This cop had no reason to come after me, and I didn't do anything wrong, but I could easily have said the wrong thing. I don't distrust cops exactly. But I am careful about what I say around them now. Nothing but a couple speeding tickets on my record, though.
None of this would be particularly surprising unless you knew me. I was generally the quiet, responsible kid, and have a look once described as barbarian accountant. However. . . I’ve had quite a few moving violations, speeding or otherwise. My other brushes with the law all involved alcohol. 30 years ago I got a DUI. Easily the stupidest most regrettable thing I’ve done. And if I hadn’t been pulled over my next stop was going to be a strip club. With more booze. At 20 I was busted for trespassing and underage drinking when neighbors called the cops on us because we were in another neighbors pool at night. Fortunately we had permission to swim there so the trespassing charges were dropped, but the underage drinking stuck. Three of us were caught with several cases of beer and an assortment of hard liquor. We decided not to mention we were expecting a dozen more people. The first time I met my buddy’s ex-wife it was by the flashing blue and red lights of a cop car. This was in Atlanta. Another friend and I flew down to visit him and all three of us went right from the airport to a bar, where we drank until about 1am. Some guy my buddy knew drove us home- at about 80 mph, on two wheels around the corners. He made it clear he was doing it to fuck with us pussy Yankees. When we got to my buddy’s house I jumped on him, hit him a few times and knocked out one of his teeth. It was about then the cops showed up. We actually managed to talk our way out of it, and went inside, where he introduced us to his then girlfriend who had been watching out the window. And around the early 90s my name was on a list of persons banned from a college here in NJ. For a variety of alcohol related reasons.
Add me to the list of the DUI offenders. But, I'm almost happy I got it when I did. I was in a bad way mentally and had started to drink and driving more and more often including drinking while driving. One night. we went out drinking, I drove my buddy's car, got a flat tire and when a cop pulled over to do a wellness check, by buddy started puking. No accidents, no one hurt. I consider myself and more importantly others, lucky. Beyond that, I was textbook example of the shy kid hanging around with the wrong crowd because they let me and shitty friends were better than no friends. Tagged along with them doing joy rides, stealing car stereo's etc. Got busted right after I turned 18 and did 61 days in jail. Even though it was a low risk detention facility, I saw my share of enough fights and scary people to know that a life of crime was not for me. I cannot even imagine going to prison for years. I can totally see why Epstein killed himself. Except he didn't.
I have a sealed thing from when I was 16 or so and fucked around with some NASA systems I wasn’t supposed to have access to or fuck around with. CSIS knocked on my parent’s door and we had a little chat that consisted of “boys will be stupid but smart boys and not do that shit again” and it’s been fine ever since. I still am on a list at the US border so crossing into the States can be a bit of a crap shoot. When I was in military college we had to wear stupid uniforms in public. Me and the rest of the rugby team got into a bit of a brawl one night with some morons that were making fun if us and some civilians got thrown into a storefront window causing damage to the civilians and the storefront window. A group of us were arrested by the military police and hauled off in handcuffs. We were paraded in front of a pissed off MP who called our Vice Commandant. We were released into the VC’s care, and proceeded to have our bags run off for a couple of months at the college. That being said, I still pass Top Secret clearance checks and criminal background checks.
Absolutely should have gotten a DUI, got smart instead and stopped drinking before it happened. Kept the underage drinking and stuff to the ranch where cops couldn’t find us. License to carry gets you out of a lot of speeding tickets, though now I’m paranoid and have stopped that too. gotta pass a background check and fingerprinting for work, too much to lose and nothing to gain.
If Canadian background checks are anything like US checks, it isn't so much what you've done as much as how willingly do you own up to it. I know people with extremely checkered pasts that hold clearances and its because they are upfront about their past transgressions. I also know of others who lost or never passed the initial background check because they tried to hide relatively minor shit.
As a young man, much sitting in the back of cop cars for fighting. I usually walked, because I was not one to start it...cops know who the bad guys are, generally. A few long lock up nights, but nothing serious. Like Nett, a sealed thing from before I was of majority. His sounds way cooler. No DUI's, etc. Just lucky, I think.
Almost got expelled from high school and was threaten with charges for “hacking” the schools grading system with a friend of mine. The application was installed on all of the lab computers and all we had to do was find the .exe file in Program Files. The administrator username was “admin” and the password was “12345678.” Took us about 4 or 5 tries to figure it out. Crack IT team at that school. Was put in handcuffs once but ultimately not charged. My friend’s family owned a Christmas tree farm and every spring we would help his dad prune and cut down the dead ones and bring them over to a field next to a pond for a big bonfire. Well one year there we’re a lot of trees and the fire was really big, like stories-high. The cops came and put me and a few other kids in the back of a squad car while the fire dept put it out. Luckily it was a real small town so the cops knew everyone, including all of our parents, and just had them pick us up.
Ive spoke at length about my DUI. Went all the way through trial and was found not guilty. The biggest take away from that amount of exposure to the criminal justice system is that the odds are completely stacked against the defendant unless you have enough money to pay a competent lawyer. The poor defendants had to face overzealous prosecutors with near unlimited budgets working against them. Sitting watching the day's docket before my turn I saw dozens of poor and uneducated people lashing out at a system, court interruptions and shouting matches with the judge, they didn't understand and public defenders that could only really offer plea deals. It felt wholly unfair and Ive supported criminal justice reforms ever since. Mark Geregos the high profile defense attorney has always floated a budget cap for prosecutors as a way to help even the playing field. Something I agree with totally.
It's kind of amusing now to remember the genuine panic in America in the late 90s to early 2000s about the Africanized killer bees swarming across the country. Probably an early sign that the news networks are not good for the nation's mental health. Those Japanese hornets are pure nightmare fuel, though.
That, and quicksand, were the things I thought were going to kill me when I was a kid. Fast forward 30 years and I ask our guide in Kenya about Killer Bees, and he looks at me like I'm a fucking moron.
I smell a quarantine PPV event, complete with betting. Killer Bees vs. Murder Hornets vs. Japanese Honey Bees.
Background checks are mostly about seeing if a nefarious actor could get leverage over you. The classic acronym related to motivations for spying is MICE: Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego. Yeah they'll look to see if you're a commie who wants to overthrow the US Government, but the most common red flags are debts that might make you more motivated by money, or secrets that can be used to coerce you. Being open about your shitty past makes it useless as an avenue to blackmail you.
“Honey bees” in his world. And while we are on the topic of panic let’s give a shoutout to all those escalators mangling both us AND our children left and right. That was one of my favourites as a kid. Back in the days of A Current Affair, Hard Copy, Inside Edition or any fly-by-night “action news” program would run those hilarious tag lines... “Sitting or standing.... which is worse?” “Drinking water: the silent killer.” “After this, we’ll find out why you must never sleep at night ever again.”