Thursday, September 3, 2009

Some people's Kids, again.

So I was checking a local park one day when I saw a lone car parked way off in a remote parking area. Being the curious sort, I coasted over to it and saw on my approach that it contained two people. I parked behind it and got out and walked up on them just to say hello (because I’m really working on my “Officer Friendly” people skills), make sure that everything was all right, and see what they were doing.

As it turned out, they were high-school-aged teens and they were drinking beer. Additionally, his pants are open and he’s exposed. It looked like he was getting some action before I rolled up and killed the mood.

Uh-oh…Busted!

So I pull the male driver out of the car and get his ID. He’s actually being fairly cooperative, so I sit him down on the grass ahead of and to the left of his car where I can keep an eye on him, and then I go around to have a few words with his girlfriend and fellow underage drinker in the passenger seat. And here’s where it started to get stupid.

I get her out of the car, noticing that she has just set an opened beer can on the floor by her seat. I ask her for her ID and she replies that I don’t have any probable cause to ask her for her personal information. I let her know that I don’t need “probable cause” to request her ID and that me seeing her in the car with the beer is more than enough reason for me to ask for it. Then she starts trying to break this down, telling me that she doesn’t believe that I had any probable cause (that phrase again) to even approach them, and therefore I have no grounds to ID either of them. I let her know that I have every right to walk up to anyone sitting in a public place just the same as anyone else does and I tell her to come up with her ID.

Now all this time, her boyfriend is sitting peacefully on the grass, not causing me a bit of trouble. But this one, she’s giving me more than enough for both of them. And as it turns out, she’s just getting started.

Next she tells me that she had no ID with her. I tell her that if she wants to stick to that claim, I’ll just figure out who she is after I arrest her for minor in possession of alcohol. Then she smugly tells me that without proof that she’s a minor, I can’t arrest her for that.

I debate just locking her up right there, but I really don’t want a juvenile arrest, so I have her sit down on the grass and I ask her boyfriend if he minds if I take a look through his car. He quickly says that he has no problem, even as she’s trying to tell him that he doesn’t have to let me (I’m starting to suspect that she’s some sleazy defense lawyer’s kid by now) so with his consent, I reach in, pick up the purse that’s sitting on the seat, open it up, and extract a pocketbook with a driver’s license clearly visible in a plastic holder on the outside. “Well that was easy enough,” I say as I take the license out of the holder.

She’s on her feet in a flash. “You have no right to touch my purse!”

I explain that the owner of the car gave me consent to search the car, and the purse was unattended in the car, so yeah, that means that I get to look in there. And since it means that I don’t have to take her to jail, she should count her blessings and sit back down on the grass. She backs onto the grass but remains standing until I tell her that if I have to tell her again, she’s going in cuffs. Now she sits.

I give the car a cursory once-over and take the beer out. Both kids come back clean on the record checks so I tell the boy to call his parents and let me talk with them. He complies and in short order, I have his parents coming down to get him. Not a big deal at this point—he’s just getting a juvenile cite for the beer and I’m not letting him drive. He’s actually fine with that.

But then I get back to her. She won’t call her parents. She tells me that she doesn’t know their phone numbers. Her newest claim is that they refuse to give her their numbers, because they belong to a bike gang and travel around the country. Going on, she tells me how they only call her from pre-paid cell phones with blocked numbers so that she can’t even see their numbers on her caller ID.

I’ve had enough of her so I go back into her purse, take her phone out, open it up, and check the directory. As expected, there are listings for both “Mom” and “Dad”. She now gets upset and jumps up, launching into a profanity-laced tirade, so I grab her and cuff her and put her in my back seat, explaining as I do that she’s not under arrest yet but that she is being detained “for her safety and my own”. (I’ve never understood how that’s for their safety, but then I’ve never really much cared.)

Before I can even get the tickets finished, his parents show up. They seem like decent people and mom tells me that the problem is his girlfriend. This of course elicits a shout of “Fuck you!” from my partially-opened back seat windows. Mom look back at her and replies: “And that’s right where you belong, Jennifer! The back seat of a police car on your way to jail!” Jennifer starts to curse some more, but I slap the window with my hand and tell her to knock it off, actually silencing her for a minute. After I give him a quick PBT to make sure that he’s not totally drunk, (he wasn’t), Junior’s mom and dad took him and his car away. And since he had been nothing but cooperative I didn’t even bother bringing up the lap action that he was getting.

And then Jennifer’s parents showed up.

With no leather or chains or visible tattoos, they sure didn’t look like bike gang members. What’s more, they were very polite and apologetic and struck me right off as normal, decent people. And when Jennifer started to run her mouth again, her own mother told her to shut up before I could. I talked to them out of her earshot for a bit, explaining things. This time I did mention the lap action, and I got the impression that if Dad ever saw the boy again, the boy wasn’t going to come off too well. Mom was very apologetic and thanked me for not arresting their daughter, who, as it turned out, had already been arrested and convicted twice for underage possession.

Well that explains all of her “legal knowledge”…And to make it better, Jennifer was now 18 years old, so she got a ticket for grown-up court this time.

I took her out of the car, uncuffed her, and told her that she was going to get to go home with her parents but only if she cooperated with the PBT. As expected, she tried to fake blowing into it, but eventually I got a sample (and a result for my court case) and I set about finishing up her ticket and my notes. She began to argue with her mother at this point, and in no time at all, she yelled “Fuck you, bitch!”

Her mom immediately and without hesitation slapped her face. Hard. I mean, that slap cracked so loud that it produced an echo.

Jennifer gasped, then turned to me and screamed: “That’s domestic abuse! You have to arrest her right now! I demand that you arrest her for that!”

Nice kid, trying to get her own mom locked up when Mom was only here to keep her from going to jail.

But I told Jennifer that I’d been looking away and hadn’t actually seen the slap. I also told her that I’d heard something, but that it just sounded like a parent giving her kid some basic discipline. Mom looked at me, grinned, and mouthed “Thank you” and I gave her a wink as Jennifer ran to their car and got in the back seat, slamming the door shut. I looked over to Dad and he gave me a “thumb’s up”. Both parents told me that they don’t let her run wild and that they try to keep control on her, but she’s been running wild and threatening to call Social Services and claim abuse whenever they try to punish her. They were ecstatic to see that Jennifer’s first actual attempt to get them in trouble had failed spectacularly.

They took her away, and I didn’t see or hear from them again until her court appearance, when the mother came up to me, shook my hand, and thanked me again for not taking either her or Jennifer to jail. I already knew that the boy had pled guilty in Juvenile Court and gotten a deferred sentence and a driver’s license suspension until his 18th birthday pursuant to state law, but when Jennifer’s case was called in regular (adult) court, and after I’d testified, the judge gave her 120 hours of community service. The judge asked her if there was anything that would pose a problem with that sentence, and Jennifer exclaimed that she’d planned on spending the summer at the beach with her friends. This judge is a funny judge though, and he told her that if she was lucky, perhaps the city would let her work on their golf course because the sand traps have sand so it’d be just like the beach.

It’s not every day that you hear people laughing in court, but that one had everyone except Jennifer cracking up.

22 comments:

JL said...

Wow you are a patient man. There is no way that I would have lasted that long without hauling her little ass to jail. Of course then I would have missed the fun with her parents.

Good story bro.

Sergeant Krupke said...

I'm far from patient. I just had better things to spend a third of my shift on than a stupid POCA lock-up that would have just been a book, cite and release anyway.

But the face slap was truly priceless.

Moe said...

"I’ve never understood how that’s for their safety"

I've always gone with: Keeps 'em from doing something that would require my reaction to bash them in the face. Ergo, they're safe.

;-)

Psychlone Ranger said...

You got style, Krupke. I'll give you that.
And the patience of a saint.

Frankly, I'd have been handing the POCA's parents brochures for military academies, same as the father in the previous entry. Girl needs a good lesson in "you ain't so much the hardass that you think"...

CALL ME...CRAFTY... said...

THIS IS AWESOME! THE SAD PART IS YOU'LL PROBABLY BE SEEING HER IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS OR YEARS IF SHE STILL HASN'T LEARNED HER LESSON...UGH, POSSIBLE FREQUENT FLYER IN THE MAKIN...LOL

Sister Copinherhair said...

Great story!

Mr. Indubitably told my son that his parents could spank him; his teachers could spank him; AND the police could spank him.

...as long as they don't leave a mark.

It sounds like Jennifer could have used that speech when she was seven years old too. :)

MJ said...

This sounds too horrendous to be true. Are these the kinds of people my kids are going to have to deal with? Yuck.

Moose said...

What a maroon. I'm not sure which is worse - people who think they know the law from watching TV or those who "learn" things from their previous stupidities.

Probably the latter; it shows they haven't "learned" anything at all.

That girl has all the classic signs of a sociopathy disorder -- Doesn't appear to understand the concepts of responsibility or consequences, lies about simple things at the drop of a hat, completely self-absorbed. Sadly, studies are showing that there aren't yet any mental-health treatments to help many sociopaths.

I feel awful for her parents.

Anonymous said...

I am in awe of your patience and wit.

Moose is probably on to something, with the little wench's disregard for all authority figures. That her parent are still married, and that they both showed up and supported you, with a bit of corporal punishment thrown in, makes me think that, with seemingly cohesive, responsible parents, there's something more going on with her.

As I have no children, I will sound nonchalant saying this: If I had a kid like her (one who was under 18), and this kid threatened to call CPS, and if I had no younger children who'd be affected by a CPS complaint, AND, if I'd been a responsible parent but still ended up with this kid, I'd give her her wish, hand her over to CPS and be done with it.

Atticus Thraxx said...

Sorry if I don't tug at your zipper like the rest of the respondents...
Course you could have just left them the "F" alone and minded your own business since there didn't seem to be a crime occurring.
I'm not just poking for poking's sake here... does it ever occur to you people to just leave us the fuck alone? Seriously?
And don't start with all the "What Ifs", you didn't see a crime until you stuck your nose into someone's business. Enough is enough. Maybe we have to damn many cops, you got time and inclination to be so frickin nosy. I don't give a damn about pinhead and his little skank...but come on.

Atticus Thraxx said...

Don't see your reply here though I received an email saying you had.
Fair enough answer I suppose though the attempt at whittling me down on my age falls flat as there's a good chance I'm older than you.
What you call proactive policing I would call oppression. Someone injecting themselves into others privacy cause someone gave 'em a gun and a badge.
Look I'm not gonna change your mind and you darn sure won't change mine. But remember we all eventually reap what we sow. Hope it don't hurt when it's your turn.

Sergeant Krupke said...

Sorry kiddo, but Possession of Alcohol by persons under the age of 21 is a crime, and so is Possession of an Open Container of Alcohol in any public place by persons of any age, so in response to your whingeing, crimes were in fact being committed in a public place where I had every right to look and no, I can't and won't leave you kids alone when you're on my beat and I suspect that you might be up to no good.

Don't like it? Take it up with your legislators because they write the laws that we cops have to enforce. Hopefully you're at least old enough to vote.

And checking things out is what some of us like to call "proactive policing" or just "damned good police work". It's that sort of thing that stops rapes in progress and occasionally even finds people who have overdosed on drugs in time to save them. And of course the day that we don't check on a suspiciously-parked car and it turns out that something like that was going on inside it, people like you will be all outraged that we didn't do our jobs.

Bottom line: If you don't want police scrutiny, do your dirty deeds in the privacy of your own home. Of course that's probably difficult when you still live with your parents, but you get the idea.

Sergeant Krupke said...

Hey, you're the one who said “leave US alone” when the post was about minors acting badly. Don't blame me for inferring your age from that.

And like I said—if you don't want scrutiny, then take your nonconforming behavior into a non-public area. But if you think that you're going to get “privacy” when you park your car in a public area, you've got another think coming.

And as for the “reaping what we sow” idea...since I'm one of the good guys and I do what's right, I have no reason to fear the consequences. In fact, if there's any karmic response due my actions, I welcome it.

Capt. Schmoe said...

Little princess needs to remember that her parents no longer need to put up with her BS. Sooner or later, they will realize their sanity is more important than her juvenile needs and will give her the boot.

JoelKatz said...

I don't see how you can justify searching her purse. You knew it was hers. Her boyfriend had no authority to authorize you to search it. You ordered her out of the car, so it's not like she willfully abandoned it And she told you she denied you that permission.

Sounds like a clear 4A violation.

Peter said...

Sorry, but just what was your probable cause in bothering them in the first place, legally parked and all,

People have a right to be left alone, and frankly, you didn;t have a reason to knock on the windows,

Gary McGath said...

Let's see: You searched a person's purse when she had explicitly refused permission. You "detained" her without charges. You ignored an assault which took place before your eyes and winked at the assailant.

Marvelous.

randall, esq., said...

Reading this self-serving version of events crafted by Saint Policeman makes me want to puke.

Who cares if you COULD have done things as you did? The question is SHOULD you? For instance, my car has been broken into twice and my house once. Beyond filling out a meaningless police report, you shouldn't be surprised to know nothing else was done. That's because cops are taxmen, first, and crime-fighters last. You guys are too busy giving out speeding tickets and fucking with high school kids to actually HELP your community. It would be fun to compare the number of criminal enterprises you brought down to the number of Class C misdemeanor tickets you have written. Thanks so much for your service.

Even more fantastic is your obvious disdain for criminal defense attorneys. Whether you realize it or not, this is another way of saying "your obvious disdain for the constitution." The reason cops hate attorneys is because attorneys POLICE cops. And being policed is only okay when it isn't happening to YOU, right? Go look up the word "ironic."

Have fun working out your manipulation and control fantasies at work today, Officer Krupke. We are lucky to have you protecting us from teen-aged blow jobs.

Sergeant Krupke said...

Peter,

I don't need "probable cause" to walk up to any car that's parked on public property and look inside, and if I can see what's going on in broad daylight, so can anyone and everyone else, so the occupants don't even have a reasonable expectation of privacy. I didn't even have to knock on the window because it was daylight and they could see me just like I could see them.

And the "right to be left alone" that you cite...Where is that in the Constitution? I'm pretty familiar with that document and can't find that right anywhere. Are you saying that if that was a non-consensual sex act taking place, the rapist would have a right to be left alone and we should never check to be sure the girl was ok? You're wife/daughter must think you're swell, Peter.

Sergeant Krupke said...

Gary McGrath...

Do I stop by your place of employment and tell you that you're putting too much salt on the fries?

randall, I'm starting to understand why people break into your car. It's your personality, little man. You obviously irritate the general public with your anger towards authority and disdain for your community. Seek help.

And just to point out the obvious for you, police work comes from making contacts with the public. The more contacts, the more crimes you discover being committed and the more information you develop about other crimes past, present or future. Sometimes the contacts turn out to by nothing, but other times, the nosy officer catches the thief with a car full of stuff, and if he investigates, he might even discover that the stuff is stolen and that it belongs to you, and thanks to that officer's diligence, you get your stuff back.

Of course you sound like the kind of guy who would still try to show your ingratitude even as the officer is handing you back your skateboard and xbox that he just recovered from Gary McGrath's car. You got issues but it's ok because we understand.

1-800-dr-laura. Call today.

Unknown said...

Wow, if you really are a cop I'm glad I don't live in your area. Your disdain for the Constitution and for actually stopping crime is pretty evident, but so as to not take up place on your blog, I put it on mine. Take a gander, if you'd like.

Atticus Thraxx said...

Forgot about this thread and Capn' Crunch or Krupke whatever the hell.. Still defending harassing teenagers Barney? Good, Nice to be able to keep an eye on ya. Who knows what kind of havoc you would render on real police work. Don't forget your bullet...we ain't giving you another.