Dude spent the night in jail because some idiots high in the food chain decided to inflate their stats.

One of them tells me that Central Booking downtown is overwhelmed because the police were asked by the district attorney to make a sweep this weekend...The guards are clearly angry that the police have brought so many people to the Tombs on a Sunday, the police are angry that we aren't being processed quickly enough for them to bring in more prisoners and make their quotas

Yeah, I had a similar experience in the Orleans Parish Prison. For a guy like me - with no appreciation of how easy it is to be randomly yanked off the street - it was an eye-opener.

But I am not a crook, and I was sophisticated enough to know how to deal with the system. I raised hell about my arrest to the point of being on TV the night I was released, as well as on the day I came back for my trial.

Privilege is a lovely thing, and one striking aspect of my experience was the difference between me and the many other people who had been randomly arrested that night. By the time of my trial, my cop had been kicked off the force, and I assume my arrest - along with my successful* Internal Affairs complaint - had something to do with that (though in the interim he was actually busted for something else).

*The cop was found guilty of discourtesy. No lie.

Spent a weekend in Flagstaff. Cops were picking up hitchhikers mostly to keep them from freezing. The freeway was snowed closed.

I played drinking games with Latinos and Natives. Loser (cards? "paper, scissors, rock?" dominoes? don't remember) drinks water til it hurts.

Spent a night in Santa Cruz. Just drunk tank, and god was I drunk.

Got caught with grass in Dallas. Grass taken away, driven downtown, released.

Got booked in MI for dui. The other times I don't remember getting booked. I was drunk and stoned and the only thing I remember is that the cop kept me at the breathalyzer until he gave up on a DWI. Like five times. Fucking expensive Manhattans.

It's been almost 10 years now since the last time I was arrested. Still kicking myself for taking the plea, minor as it was, and not holding out with the rest of my cohort for the dismissal that came at their very next court appearance. One of the guys who was grabbed with us, and rode in the same paddy wagon (but did not end up in my holding cell) was a DePaul employee who literally walked out the door of his office building in downtown Chicago and into the waiting arms of the police. He was somewhat more huffy about the whole thing than I would have thought necessary. I mean, the rest of us were by and large middle-class white guys too. It's not like we had fleas or something.

Them sandwiches are disgusting. They ought to switch to a dry granola bar or something.

The other day on the bus I heard a story from a black fellow in his early 40s about how he'd been stopped by the police downtown last summer, despite not fitting the description of the cell phone thief they were looking for. He apparently gave the officer a nasty look, so the cop shoved him and called for back-up. He said to the cop "Why'd you lay your hands on me?" and the cop said "Well, you didn't have to look at me that way." I don't believe that he pursued it with Internal Affairs though.

3.2: We played "Battleship" on the cinderblock walls with the mud from our shoes in Chi.

Oh! Also, one of my friends witnessed a murder yesterday! She was pretty shaken up.

I was lucky, I guess, that the one night I spent in custody was in the locked ward of the hospital. It was really perfectly nice (I'm not sure I even realized the room was locked until the next morning) and the other prisoners there were perfectly gracious. At one point my wallet fell on the ground and one of the other guys warned me about it, so there was no risk of anybody stealing it. The doctor was an asshole to me, though.

I'm sure that I borrowed this insight from someone somewhere, but the biggest social divide in modern America is between those reasonably likely to have a family member/close friend spend some time in stir, and the rest. And the big change is that the former group used to encompass a much higher proportion of white people.

I was once arrested and cuffed, but they uncuffed me at the station (which was in suburban NJ, and so unthreatening). They did keep my (drunk) best friend cuffed to a pipe mounted to the wall, which seemed kind of dickish. I was a juvenile (he was a month past his 18th), and they ended up releasing us to my parents.

Oh, also, the other March 20th detainees are supposedly getting $950, but I'm not sure I'm eligible.

Semi-related: drug dealer family moved out (apparently to a niceish new development across the neighborhood, one that was built to replace awful public housing towers). The shitty landlord is redoing the apt., and the 3rd floor has now had 2 consecutive non-awful tenants, so we're kind of hopeful.

They did keep my (drunk) best friend cuffed to a pipe mounted to the wall, which seemed kind of dickish.

It's because drunks are unpredictable and it doesn't take very many instances of having a drunk all of a sudden transition into fight mode from weepy and/or maudlin to convert a cop to the "fuck it, drunks stay cuffed" SOP.

I was lucky, I guess, that the one night I spent in custody was in the locked ward of the hospital.
I'm not sure this counts.
1: Did the police have no agency?

8.1: In some places were I've lived, it seems to be policy that DUI means a night in jail no matter how quickly you get a lawyer/bail money there. At least, DUI is how the people I know who spent the night in jail got sent to jail.

1: Did the police have no agency?

It's like you've never watched The Wire.

I was arrested once when a sword was found in my carry-on luggage at LAX.

Boy did that suck.

1/6th of MN drivers have a DUI - 1/6TH! Coincidentally, we have a lot of middle-aged guys who ride their bikes a lot.

15: Wait. What?

1: Did the police have no agency?

Yeah, but the NYPD had been notoriously stat driven for a while.

it seems to be policy that DUI means a night in jail no matter how quickly you get a lawyer/bail money there.

This varies a lot by jurisdiction. Highway patrol pretty much books everyone into jail but we often try to get someone to come pick them up and release on a citation for first offenders, no one was hurt in a traffic accident, etc.

I spent the whole summer between 8th and 9th grade in juvenile lockup and a young offender bootcamp. I sometimes, at the age of 31, completely forget about this episode of my life, and then reremember it with amazement.

Was I unclear?

Perfectly clear. Maybe a bit sparse on the details.

12: You're not sure it counts as what?

Maybe a bit sparse on the details.

Indeed - scimitar, cutlass, foil, what?

20: Wow. Details?

the biggest social divide in modern America is between those reasonably likely to have a family member/close friend spend some time in stir, and the rest. And the big change is that the former group used to encompass a much higher proportion of white people.

I would think that "some time" here means post-sentencing, not overnight in a drunk tank. My brothers and Jammies have all been taken in for various things, for 1-3 days, but being on the privileged side of the law, none have done any real time.

No real time, but only because the duck lived.

25: Me and a couple of friends used to break open cigarette machines, steal garbage bags full of them, and sell them at school for $1 a pack. We finally got caught, and because we were middle class and white, got probation. A bit later I got picked up on smaller stuff (truancy, etc), and so got put in juvie to cool down for a while, and then a rehab for teenagers since I also tested positive for weed. Got kicked out of there several weeks later for acting up too much, and was sure at that point the judge would throw the book at me, which would have meant a year in a very grim place for Alabama's more incorrigible youthful offenders. Instead she just sent me to a bootcamp for the rest of the summer. Again, white and middle class.

Anyway, it mostly sucked, but was sometimes fun and an adventure. As I said, I go long stretches without thinking about it, though it's probably had a deep underlying effect on my personality. After I got out I was well-muscled and in good shape, and had a reputation as a badass in school, which made freshman year easier.

26: Yeah, I mean, just in the activist scene, practically everyone I know has at least been detained, with most having been booked, and quite a few who have spent the night in jail. I know several people who've been for real, no shit, imprisoned too. Outside the activist scene, I can think of at least a few people who've been busted for something, often drug related or DUI, not always though.

Sometimes it strikes me that, to someone from the other side of the socio-cultural divide, I might seem very well-connected, even though my day-to-day life is pretty mundane and quotidian. I mean, I have several friends who have published books, many more who are fairly successful journalists, lots of friends with titles like "artistic director" or "executive director", and throughout my life I've known several relatively high-up political apparatchiks and elected officials. Most of my neighbors could not say as much. Why, I'll bet there's hardly anyone else on my block who's interviewed a Hollywood director! So yeah, I mean, two Americas, unequal and separate, except when they're not.

And the big change is that the former group used to encompass a much higher proportion of white people.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but I don't think this can possibly be true given the huge increases in incarceration over the last couple of decades. That is, I'm pretty sure that the proportion of white people who have served time or are currently in jail is significantly higher than it was in e.g. the 70s. See for example Table 3 of this Petit and Western paper which shows that the lifetime risk of incarceration doubled for both white males and black males between 1945-49 and 1965-69 birth cohorts. Of course since the black base rate was much higher to start the overall impact on the black community has been more devastating.

15, 22, 24- See, it was a situation where there was a length and width limit on carry-ons, and the sword was too long, but by putting it across the hypotenuse of a rectangular shaped suitcase it met the length and width limitations, except then it looked like he was trying to smuggle a huge knife on board.

31: and the sword was too long

I've heard THAT one before!

11: fair enough. The cops weren't bad - predictably, one was kind of a dick, while the other was fine. I was driving, my buddy was drunk (they spotted me doing something foolish with the car). The one cop said to me, "You're not drunk, but I do think you've been drinking." At the time, I had, literally, never had a drink of alcohol in my life, so I didn't think he showed much expertise there. For a 17-y.o. being pulled over with an obviously drunk 18-y.o. in the car, I think I comported myself pretty well.

Actually, maybe he assumed I'd have been a lot more panicky without a drink or two in me.

30: Well then I guess I'll have to ditch my theory. If it were a smaller increase, I'd suggest a change in density would be consistent with my theory - that is, it doesn't matter whether 1 relative or 3 has been in jail - but once you go so far as doubling, it seems impossible that you don't have a larger Bacon number, if you will, for ex-cons.

I think he assumed that the BACs of teens in the same car are nearly always correlated.

Anyway, a friend of mine once knew a guy who said that when he was a teen maybe the concept of "designated driver" was stretched a bit so that it meant someone who drank a six pack or less.

35: Well yeah, as a base assumption, but this was after I'd done the drunk test (IIRC spread my arms out and lean my head back; I can no longer recall if there was backwards counting). There couldn't have been a bigger difference between my demeanor and that of my buddy.

Presumably my buddy loudly slurring, "He's never had a drink in his life, occifer!" wasn't helping (I pointed this out to him at the time).

Incidentally, this mark on his record resulted in his naval specialty (already assigned, delayed until after graduation) being switched from medic to sonar tech - something about substance-related trouble and medical responsibility? That kind of sucked. Although his post-military sonar career has been a real success.

My dad said that the guys who had to listen to the little beeping got paid extra.

the BACs of teens in the same car are nearly always correlated
Only if they've been making out.

We had a guy who was a proper designated driver who drank nothing at all. The cops pulled them over and he still got MIP'ed even though they believed he was sober. He lost his student council position over it.

MIP'd?

Minor in posession.

Of alcohol.

Who gets caught.

By the police.

With alcohol.

||

"And as his plane crashed down, he thought 'Well isn't this nice. And isn't it ironic. A little tooo ironic...' "

|>

The minor has the alcohol. The police have a car with a radio and some guns.

47: It's like flaaaames on your wedding day?

From that song.

By that angry girl.

From Canada.

About the Dumb&Dumber guy.

Really? Jim Carrey or the other one?

The one that's also in Full House. David Coulier.

54: I was thinking: Dick Cheney or the other one?

David Coulier does a great job of playing Jeff Daniels.

Never been arrested. Never spent the night in the cells. Have been huckled into the back of a police van a few times and given a hard time, but it didn't get any further than that.

One time, when we were about 15, the cops picked us up threw us in the back of the van and tried to get us to confess to a burglary. We were on the way back from a gig at the time. There was a bit of heavy-threatening, but no violence (other than being manhandled into the van). We weren't idiots, so after about 5 minutes they chucked us out.

Another time, a friend had a motorbike crash, and when the police arrived on the scene they asked us to help them take the mashed bike to the station. Which we did. We been decided it was better our mate get done for riding with no plates and no insurance, than for motorbike theft. Ahem. So while they drove us to the station sitting in the back with the bike I made polite conversation with the cops, while two other guys [who, qua bikers, had more or less a full toolkit in their pockets] stripped it. The bike we unloaded looked quite different from the bike we'd loaded. I expect we clanked gently as we walked away.

Another thing that might be going on is that presumably most middle class people who have been arrested don't do a lot of talking about it -- look at the various presidentiality in this thread.

59: There were lots of educational aspects to my night in jail. One of them was how intensely ashamed I was at having been arrested. I didn't expect that at all.

But I got over it, and it's a pretty entertaining story that I've enjoyed telling over the years.

And when you get arrested in New Orleans, it turns out that many, many people have stories about how they, too, or a friend got arrested in New Orleans. The prosecutor at my trial - trying to convince me to take a deal - told me about how he had been arrested.

I've been hooked up a few times, actually taken to a jail only twice. Longest I spent in was half a day or so, and that was just a stupid traffic warrant up here in UT. Highway patrol guys will book people on fucking anything. If I was booking people on every traffic warrant I came across I wouldn't have any time to do anything else.

||
Salt Lake City police to wear camera glasses?
|>

The cameras run about $1,000 each, plus the cost of storing the footage, so it's going to take time to get them to all officers.

Thank god. Yes, there's upsides to it but I'm not really keen on having my every move videotaped.

63: maybe you can wear a minituarized version of the Google StreetView car setup on your head.

gswift sex tape countdown starts now.

I wonder if it happens in police work as much as (or more than) in other occupations that you find yourself quite often on the defensive about particular stereotypes associated with your profession, which you are at pains to dispel, and then every once in awhile you have to work with someone who embodies all the stereotypes to a T, and you become exasperated because they are letting the side down?

We've got someone in from out of town who is like that. Nice enough as a person, but should probably try to affect a bit less of the old je ne sais quoi.

Right. And that's why you need the 360 and not just the forward look.

67 -> 65

and then every once in awhile you have to work with someone who embodies all the stereotypes to a T

Oh hell yes that happens.

Regarding cameras, there's aspects of the job that are so fun and that's going to kill some of that off. Let's say, totally and 110 percent hypothetically godamnit, that you have a guy with warrants holed up in a motel room and even though you've obtained a key from the front desk the wanted guy has the security latch engaged and so you can only open the door a few inches. You can seem him all jittery and high in the room but he's refusing to open the door. You don't want to kick in the door of the nice and cooperative hotel. So maybe (have I established this is hypothetical?) you shine the laser of the taser into room causing the guy to run around trying to dodge it and tell him that if he doesn't open the door he's going to get TASED IN THE FUCKING FACE. And he promptly opens the door.

|| Right now I hate my fucking country and its cowardly pass-the-buck politicians and its smug religious liars and its medics who wash their hands of responsibility (but probably don't actually wash their literal hands enough) who between them let a young woman die for no reason.
>

What a terrible, terrible story.

It was all for nothing and known to be for nothing because the miscarriage was inevitable. And even with the stupid constitution we have it could probably have been avoided, but for twenty years governments have ducked and dived to avoid providing a clear legislative framework, and hospitals have apparently fallen back on "ethics" from the Catholic theology rulebook.
My devoutly Catholic grandfather used to claim that he had threatened to bring his pregnant wife to the Protestant hospital unless the doctors in the Catholic one undertook to put her life first. (I hxve some slight doubts as her delivery seems to have been straightforward enough that she had the next child at home, common in those days as a pattern.)

My sixty year-old Irish-Catholic coworker said that everybody in her cohort went to Jewish hospitals for everything related to reproduction.

That story is just awful, and I really hope that some worthwhile legislation comes out of it.

71 to 69.

71 and 73: Do you all think that this could happen in the US in one of the more anti-abortion states? There's something that makes me think that even anti-abortion doctors would terminate a pregnancy when a woman is bleeding out and they know that the fetus is about to die, but I don't know.

75: I imagine it's possible, given this similar episode (which turned out the other way, but wouldn't have if the Church were calling the shots).

Dunno, but when I was looking for an ob-gyn when I got regular insurance and didn't need to go to Planned Parenthood anymore, I was more than happy to go to Beth-Israel Hospital.

77: My BI is the merger of a Jewish hospital and a methodist one. I knew a woman who got most of her care at St. E's (which is now owned by a private equity firm and not Catholic) but got her reproductive health care at Brigham and Women's.

76: Okay, that's interesting. I was thinking less of the Catholic anti-abortion people and more of the evangelicals. I have this feeling that there's a split there where the evangelicals (who are more concerned with the slut shaming) aren't going to let a married woman die when her fetus/baby is in the process of dying. Dunno.

78.2: I don't think evangelical churches run nearly as many hospitals, do they? If it happened due to evangelicals ruling the roost unofficially, it would probably be less due to systematic policies. But again, it certainly seems possible.

Someone was just telling me this morning about the deal that Steward Health Care made with the Boston-area Catholic hospitals it recently took over. They agreed to keep the hospitals' present reproductive health practices for a year or two, and then they'll start offering the full range of services.

79: Sure, as a policy, but I kind of wonder what the individual doctor would do. But yes, I don't like Catholic Hospitals, and if I were ever raped I would demand not to be taken to one even though I have an IUD and wouldn't need the morning after pill.

Although his post-military sonar career has been a real success.

Hope it wasn't this former Navy sonar tech.

80: I knew that they had made some kind of promise, but that they wouldn't keep it for long.

71 to 69.

From the outside perspective it probably sounds worse than it really was. This guy wasn't a stranger on a traffic stop. Me and my beatmate have arrested him before and he knows us and that we're very laid back and not looking to actually rough him up or anything. He was just hitting the crystal as usual and was freaking out thinking we were going to impound the car he'd just bought and that all his belongings in the hotel room were going to get thrown away. Once he snapped out of it and opened the door I called his mom and she came over and got his car and all his stuff. He was quite thankful.

I spent a few hours in the cells. (Open container.) It was stupid. I was picked up 'cause it was the end of the uni year, and a journo + photog were riding along, and I was the first person they saw. Waste of time mainly. Quite disconcerting.

75: they might have done something if she were bleeding out. What they did do was ignore the risk of infection.