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.

Some people's kids...

So one summer night about 1AM or thereabouts, I’m driving along, minding my own business, when I see an SUV go by in the other direction with four teens in it. Of course these are white kids from the ‘burbs, so they don’t have a clue about playing it cool. Instead, they treat me to a fantastic display of the “Oh shit—we’re busted!” look as we pass each other.

Now I don’t know what these idiots are up to but I know that there’s something going on, so I bang a U-turn and go after the SUV. Fortunately the driver has decided to make it easy for me by rabbiting up to the next cross-street and then pulling into a subdivision and quickly dousing the lights. Granted, I had lost sight of the vehicle for a second or two while turning around, but this trick is so predictable that when I didn’t see the SUV on the road, I just knew where I’d find it. Sure enough—As I rounded the first right-turn corner, there it was, making like a parked and unoccupied.

I pulled up behind it and activated all of my lights. Marking out with the stop, I used my PA to tell them to sit up and raise their hands so that I could make sure that no one was holding anything dangerous. I also told the driver to lower all of the windows then turn the engine off. Then I walked up to see him.

As I approached and looked into the back seat at the two scared high-school boys sitting there, the smell of beer was almost strong enough to wrinkle my shirt. I asked the visibly nervous driver for his license and registration, then I asked him where the beer was.

All four immediately started to deny having any beer at all.

Come on, guys…Do I really look that stupid?

Back-up arrives and I step all four of them out and seat them on the curb. Sure enough, there are partially-full beer cans under both front seats. Beer is also sloshing around on the floorboards, the result of four panicked kids trying to shove opened beer cans under seats that aren’t high enough to allow beer cans to be shoved under them vertically.

The SUV belongs to the parents of the driver. It’s not even three weeks old. It probably still had that “new car” scent to it a few minutes ago. Now it’s going to have a “stale beer” smell.

I give each kid a breath test on my portable breath tester. All four have consumed alcohol and each gets cited for underage consumption. And now comes the fun part…calling four sets of parents at one in the morning to tell them to come get their kids.

One boy begged me not to call his father, an Army Major on the nearby post. He said that his dad had promised to send him to military school if he messed up one more time, and he really, really didn’t want to have to go to military school. Of course I didn’t believe him, but even if I had, I wouldn’t have cared. I started calling and in short order, four very unhappy parents were on the way to the scene of my traffic stop.

Typically when this sort of thing happens, the parents are often madder at me than at their precious little darlings, so I was expecting to get some attitude from a couple of them. However the Major arrived first.

I explained to him what had happened, and showed him the beer. He looked into the SUV and saw all of the spilled beer that was quickly reeking it up. Then he turned and began to dress down all four of the boys in a manner worthy of a Drill Sergeant. He went on and on about stupidity and thoughtlessness and the risks to their future, then he excoriated them for wrecking the interior of the SUV. They wouldn’t even make eye contact with him as he went on and on, pacing back and forth in front of them.

As the other parents arrived in short order, he joined me as I told them what had been going on, and he apologized to each of them for his son’s role. He also requested that the other parents wait around for a few minutes, and when the owners of the SUV showed up, the Major made each boy apologize to them for dumping the beer all over the floor carpeting. I was really liking this guy. Why can’t more parents be like him?

Finally, after the other boys were sent home with their parents and their juvenile court appearance tickets, the Major put his son in his own car, then apologized to me for all of the trouble. I told him that it was just my job and that it wasn’t a problem for me. I then told him that his son had claimed that the Major was going to send him to military school if I’d called him. I’d expected the Major to get a chuckle out of that, but he looked at me with a serious expression on his face and said that he had told his boy that, and that he’d meant it. Apparently this wasn’t the boy’s first screw up and as a result of this incident, the boy was going to spend his upcoming junior year and probably his senior year at a nearby military prep school where he could get a bit more structure away from his bad-influence friends.

I cleared the scene thinking that if every parent cared as much as this one did, my job and that of most other cops would be a lot easier.

It's a car--it's a plane--it's a SUBMARINE!

It started out as a quiet summer night a few years back.

I was just driving along, minding my own business, when a small late-model car with two teen girls passed me going the opposite direction. They weren't speeding or anything, but the driver clearly had that panicky "oh shit, it's a cop!" look on her face. That look on the face of a driver, passenger or pedestrian is usually a red flag and a good reason for closer investigation, so I braked and U-turned on that car just to follow it for a bit.

Immediately that white car became a rocket and took off.

Oh, yeah. Here we go. I hit the overhead lights and called out with a pursuit in progress. It was about 11PM or so on a dark, deserted rural road with no traffic and nowhere for this car to go. Or so I thought, anyway. The driver of the car immediately made a sharp left turn onto a narrow dirt road that led into one of our parks.

I let dispatch know that the pursuit had now turned into this park, and that the chase was about to terminate as this road was less than a mile long. I knew that it came to a dead end in a small parking area for the boat launch that was there. I guess I naively assumed that these girls knew it too as I expected them to start slowing down any time.

But they kept their speed up, reaching highway speeds on this narrow dead-end dirt road.

"They gotta know this is a dead end," I kept telling myself.

But apparently they did not. And before I could even say "WTF?!", they shot into and across the parking area, hit some logs meant as a barrier to stop cars from rolling past the parking lot boundary, and went airborne for a brief moment before impacting with a huge splash into the water beyond.

They almost cleared the whole dock, but they wound up taking that out, too.

"10-50 into the water! Roll Rescue and start a Hook," I told Dispatch.

But as it turned out, the girls weren't injured. Both clambered out of the car and waded ashore. And just my luck--they're 17. Juveniles. I really, really hate dealing with juveniles just because of all of the extra hoops that our department makes us jump through.

As it turns out, this all started because they had a beer in the car between them. One beer. And when they saw me, they panicked. Of course being teen girls, when I asked where they got the beer, they lied and claimed that they just found it sitting alongside the road.

"OK, so you're in the habit of stopping to pick up any bottle on the ground that looks like it might have beer in it and drinking it, is that right?"


"Uh-huh," they both said with straight faces.

So I asked for their ID and parents' contact info.

"Do you really have to call my mom?" the one asks.

"Gee, do you think?"

So rescue came and checked them out and pronounced them fine but wet. I then administered a PBT (Portable Breath Test) to both, because, being under 21, any alcohol in their system is illegal and the PBT is sufficient for a citation. Both had positive scores so each got an "Underage Consumption of Alcohol" citation.

Then the real fun. The moms showed up. No fathers--just two very angry mothers.

And predictably, they were not angry at the girls, but at each other, and, of course, at me.
Each mom blamed the other girl for getting her daughter into this mess. Then it got positively comical when they learned that the car--owned by om A--had been driven into the water by the daughter of Mom B. So after Mom A jumps on me for chasing darling daughter into the water, she demands to know who is going to have to pay for the damage to her car.

"That's between you and your insurance company," I tell her. "And you can also expect a hefty bill for that dock."

"But my daughter wasn't driving!"

"Apparently not," I explained. "But you entrusted your car to your daughter. Your daughter entrusted it to this girl. And when I called your insurance company, they told me that neither of them are covered drivers on your insurance policy. This is probably going to go against you since it was your car and you'll have to sue this other girl through her mother to recover the amounts that you're going to wind up being held liable for."

This of course started a screaming match between the mothers that looked like it was about to go Pro Wrestling. Since it wasn't taking place in front of my cruiser's video camera, I moved in to break it up before the fists flew and the hair extensions came out.

I quickly got everyone documented and sent them home, and then hung out to write my report in peace while waiting for the tow-truck to show up and yank the car out. And it's lucky for me that I got rid of Mom A before the hook showed up, because that chimp that the tow company sent out probably did more damage to the car by carelessly yanking it out (and dropping it back in at least three times due to bad hook-ups) than the Dukes of Hazzard stunt that dunked it in the first place.

This damned case wound up bouncing back and forth in the juvenile courts and civil courts for at least three years and I can't even recall how many times I was subpoenaed or deposed as the park, the insurance company and the two moms battled back and forth over the bill and tried to mitigate the fault by fighting the Underage Consumption charges, but it was a lot. (Overtime = Ka-Ching!)

Moral of the story: If you have a spoiled brat daughter, don't let her and her girlfriend borrow your year-old car without at least making sure that they're both covered drivers.