3 ms·
I have dealt with cops on a lot of occasions, some of the major ones being a fortunately non-fatal OD of two of my friends, getting my door kicked in, and one a
by 3131s 9y ago
I have dealt with cops on a lot of occasions, some of the major ones being a fortunately non-fatal OD of two of my friends, getting my door kicked in, and one arrest for sneaking into a building. I also am a white guy from an upper-middle class background.
The OD was a difficult moment. I found my friends and called it in. Both of them lived, which I am of course grateful for, but afterwards the cops spent a lot of time yelling at the group of guys who had been obliviously smoking weed downstairs, pressuring them to snitch on the dealer, and even threatening to charge us with possession (which actually can happen).
The raid was mostly as expected. The house was not too torn up or anything. The cops actually claim it was a mistake, that they were looking for someone who had lived in my apartment over a year before. I'm not so sure about that though. They didn't find any drugs, which I believe they were looking for. They confiscated a bunch of electronics from my roommates and I and it took about 2 weeks to get those back. The cops were friendly during this process. I also know one other person, a female family friend, who was completely innocent and got mistakenly raided in the middle of the night.
The building one I was just too curious. At night a friend and I snuck into a rubber plant that was under renovation. We didn't break or steal anything. I was the younger of the two, at 13 and 15 respectively. The cops had guns drawn (which I don't fault them for) and gave us a couple good knees to the stomach during the arrest. The very weird part was a cop holding down my friend and joking "did you piss yourself?" (he had not) while grabbing his crotch for easily 3-4 seconds.
The above are easily dismissed as being related to my choices in life, granted. But I've also had other random incidents. A cop pointed a gun at me because I was walking through a large college campus and stumbled into some incident where police looking for someone. Another time, my friend was the designated driver one night and, being unfamiliar with my car, accidentally flashed the brights at a police car going the opposite direction -- the cops did a burnout, came speeding up behind and slammed on the breaks, screamed at us, then peeled out in a cloud of smoke! And yet another time, looking out the front window of a law-abiding friend's house, we saw a swat team lining up to storm the neighbor's house, which had at least three or four young kids living there -- we went downstairs.
One a lighter note, a police helicopter shined its spotlight directly on me while I was sitting on my porch alone, at night, on a high dose of LSD. That was awesome and surreal, but a little dystopian.
- GFischer 9y agoThe cops had guns drawn (which I don't fault them for) This is one of my pet peeves, I believe lethal force should basically never be used by law enforcement (at least normal one, outside of SWAT or whatever edge case). If I ever become rich, I'm going to invest in some nonlethal weapon with similar range and accuracy and disablement power as lethal ones, I guess current tasers aren't good enough for law enforcement to feel safe in an escalating situation (and the U.S. has plenty of lethal weapons going around). That would also make me feel better if people feel the need to go around armed (which is a very US-only thing, doesn't happen in Europe and Latin America and Asia as far as I know).