Please recount your most entertaining run-in with the law

[moe.ron]

Breaking the Law, Breaking the Law

[SWTXBelle]

Making the mistake of being absolutely honest - while coming back from Mexico I declared a small bottle of brandy. And that was it. The Customs Agent thought that couldn't be right, so unpacked ALL my suitcases and went through everything. YIKES.

[texas*princess]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

Making the mistake of being absolutely honest - while coming back from Mexico I declared a small bottle of brandy. And that was it. The Customs Agent thought that couldn't be right, so unpacked ALL my suitcases and went through everything. YIKES.

That's actually surprising. During my ONE trip to Mexico I found it was easier to come back to the U.S. than it was to get into Mexico.

I went with a big group and we didn't get back to the border until maybe 11 PM. Maybe the Border Guy was tired or something, but he honestly didn't even look at our passports/birth certs.

When I was going through (we had to go through on foot because our U.S. transportation was waiting on the other side) the Agent didn't not even glance at my birth certificate all he asked in a tired voice was "did you bring anything?" I said no and that was it.

[Benzgirl]

Mine was in high school, almost 30 years ago.

It was the week prior to graduation and the senior class always got together at midnight for a Senior Prank. Typically, it involved something traditional like toilet papering the school or painting the bell.

Well....we had to be different. We all got together and decided to hang as many pairs of very large underware outside the school. Everyone hit K-Mart and bought those 3-pack of the cheapest we could find.

Most people took the easy route and hung their pairs in the courtyard trees or dangling from the school sign, and left. After all, it was a school night and after midnight.

Six guys and myself (I was the ring-leader) decided to tie all of our pairs together and run them up the flagpole. We were all laughing so hard that one of the neighbors heard us and called the police since they thought we were breaking into the school.

Here comes the police, and haul all of us to the station -- which was only a few blocks away. It turned out that not only was I the only girl, I was the only one that was 18. So as the police were calling the parents of the minors for curfew violations, they were contemplating vandalism charges against me. I don't remember caring that much.

I'm not sure why they called my parents since I was not a minor, but my dad told me he started to laugh as they told him that I was being held for running women's underware up the flag pole. I then saw the officer get a strange look on his face. When he put my dad on hold, he said, "Your dad wants to know if any of the pairs were your mother's".

My sarcastic response, "No, they are not her size".

Someone was on the phone with the principal. Not sure what all was discussed but we were all told that everything needed to be cleaned up by 6:00 am or we would be charged. So, we grabbed trash bags from the police station and cleaned up over 500 pairs of underware and piled them into my Chevette (it was 1980, ok!).

Being 18 and never cleaning up my car, I carried the trashbags full of underware around all summer. Finally, at an end of the summer party, I emptied the bags into the Junior Class President's car (he was a good friend). I never found out if he passed them on.

[epchick]

I DID have one problem when I was about 16 years old. This was around the time that my cousin's adoption (my aunt adopted her from the city right across the border--Juarez) wasn't finalized, so we had to cross the border to try and get it finalized. When we were crossing back over (to the U.S. side), we had to go through the "checkpoint" and everything. This was my first time crossing on foot, so I didn't know you had to show anything.

The guy who was directing us through the checkpoint and asked me for my ID. I told him that I had barely turned 16 and didn't have an ID. So he asked me for my birth certificate. I sarcastically told him, "yeah let me pull that out of my back pocket for you" and then i rolled my eyes. Obviously that pissed him off. He told me he was going to detain me, search me and then arrest me. I gave him the WTF look and then told him, "Well sir, since you OBVIOUSLY aren't from the U.S., I'll let you in on this little thing we call our constitution. If you even TRY to search me, that constitutes an 'illegal search and seizure' because 1. You have no warrant to search my person and 2. you have no reason to search me. So, you can go ahead and do all you want, but be sure that i WILL sue your pants off."

OMG, my aunt took a few steps back and acted like she didn't know me. I gave this half-ass smile back to the guy and all he said was "well young lady, if I ever see cross again without any identification, I will detain you, and if I can't verify your citizenship you will be sent back to Mexico."

Now, I've learned not to be a smartass to policemen. Plus, I think everything I told him was wrong anyways! (well according to my government teacher)

[scbelle]

Originally Posted by texas*princess

That's actually surprising. During my ONE trip to Mexico I found it was easier to come back to the U.S. than it was to get into Mexico.

I went with a big group and we didn't get back to the border until maybe 11 PM. Maybe the Border Guy was tired or something, but he honestly didn't even look at our passports/birth certs.

When I was going through (we had to go through on foot because our U.S. transportation was waiting on the other side) the Agent didn't not even glance at my birth certificate all he asked in a tired voice was "did you bring anything?" I said no and that was it.

What is it about customs agents and border patrol? Both of my stories have to do with customs agents at the same friggin' airport (Charlotte). When I was a senior in college, I took a special topics class on Cuba. Part of the class was to go on a trip to Cuba during Spring Break (which was AWESOME, btw). Everything there was so cheap, and the rum and cigars were, of course, two of the items I wanted to definitely bring back with me. So I bought about 8 bottles of rum (they were probably $6 each) and three boxes of cigars. When we came back to the states via Charlotte, I had my bottles of rum in a carry-on with me. When I sat my bag down to show the agent my passport and documentation, he heard the clink from the bottles. He said, "Ma'am, what's in your bag?" I told him I had rum. He asked me, "Ma'am, are you 21?" I told him that he had my passport, he could see that I was. Then he let me go without searching me. *whew* A friend of mine in the class wasn't so lucky. She wasn't 21, so they confiscated everything she had brought back. It sucked for her.

[aephi alum]

My encounters with the law have all been pretty tame... "What, me, speed, officer?"

Here's a good story from my husband, though.

MIT has a grand old tradition of hacks - creative pranks, such as putting a campus police car on top of the Great Dome, transforming a lobby into a cathedral, etc. There's a whole code of ethics, chief of which is that you must not destroy anything; the administration and campus police pretty much turn a blind eye as long as the code is followed.

On Halloween of his freshman year, Mr. aephi alum and a few of his friends decided to pull their first hack. There is an archway on campus from which they decided to string a giant spider web, complete with spider. So they got a lot of string, assembled the web, made a styrofoam spider, and late at night, went out to the arch. It took them a good half-hour to get the web strung up, and just as they finished - up came a CP car - lights, siren, the whole bit - and two CPs jumped out and caught them red-handed.

After the group explained what they were up to, the CPs called back to headquarters, and the chief came out to see what was going on. The group figured they were in deep trouble if the chief was on her way. But she took one look at the web and simply said: "Cool!" Then she turned to the group and said, "That's a good hack, so I'm going to let this go. Just one thing, though: You are all MIT students, right?" They all nodded. "Good," she said, "because if you turn out to be from Harvard I'll really be in trouble."

[ZTAngel]

Oh, almost forgot about this stunt I pulled in high school.

I grew up in a small, boring town. My friends and I grew bored a lot. There was nearby lake that had the name of the lake posted on a sign near the shore. It read "Big Bass Lake". So, my friends and I got this idea one night to make the sign read how we wanted it read. We got some paint that matched the sign. We painted over the B in Bass. The sign now read, "Big Ass Lake". We thought it was real funny until the cops started handed out notices in the neighborhood that said if anyone knew who did this to let them know. (small town...cops had nothing better to do either) My friends and I were so scared that someone may have seen us painting; we made sure to stay at home practically every night for a month after that to keep ourselves out of trouble.

[IheartMATT806]

Me and two other close friends got pulled over in North Carolina on a trip to Nags Head. Back up was called in and the TV stations were notified even before we were pulled over and questioned. Come to find out, the car we were in was reported to have drug trafficing in the local area. We were all pulled over, frisked and the car searched. After instense questioning and a phone call home to my parents in Virginia, we were released. To make a really scary story short, my freinds boyfreind was taking her car to North Carolina to sell drugs when she thought he was borrowing it for work. None of us knew about his "secret life" but it finally caught up with us and scared us shitless!! Needless to say she dumped his ass after he went to jail!!!!

[GeekyPenguin]

There's a fairly ritzy subdivision called Bristlecone Pines in my hometown, and a lot of people like to rearrange the letters (facing a highway and two country roads) to spell Penis. They're now bolted down and spotlighted at all times. I luckily never got caught doing that.

I don't really have very many entertaining cop stories, I look a little older than I am so I've always been okay after partying. I think the worst was the first time I got pulled over...there is a podunk stop sign in my town where there's a left turn lane and a straight lane. I rolled through the left turn lane and went straight, and got pulled over. This was the day after I got my license, so I am none too happy about this. My friend and I had been blasting Limp Bizkit, so I reach down to turn off the stereo and grab my license. The cop shines a light in the car and interrogates me about what I was doing - he thought I was hiding beer or weed! He let me off with a warning, thankfully.

Actually, I just thought of another funny cop story - I was back at my high school for some reason or other and had a bunch of my friends in my car freshman year of college. We had this little pathway connecting the road to the parking lot that I decided I wanted to drive accross. (I don't know why this seemed fun, but at the time it seemed like a super idea.) As I do that, I start driving through the parking lot and get pulled over IN THE PARKING LOT of the junior/senior building for doing this. The cop thought we were drunk and sent us on our way.

[carnation]

Definitely my most entertaining brush with the law was getting held by the FBI in 1975 for several hours because they were convinced I was the infamous criminal Patty Hearst.

YES, it's true.

[Rio_Kohitsuji]

Originally posted by KillarneyRose
High school, "parking" with boyfriend, busted by policeman, small town, grew up with my mom....still mortified when I see this guy whenever I'm home

Heh..I am soooooo with you!!

I was busted with my then-boyfriend back in high school about my senior year. On a back road (that no one travels) and here comes a stupid cop. Worst thing was, the ex had just turned off his scanner (yep..firefighter) so we didn't get a warning before. Thankfully, they didn't ask for ID on me, my cousin works in the local PD and since my parents are HEAVILY into politics it would have been around to them by morning..oye!

[TriDeltaGal]

ZTAngel, the big ass lake story cracked me up!

Okay, after reading everyone's funny stories here's one of mine:

The first winter break home from college, my best friends from home decided we were going to have a girls' weekend up at my friend's apartment at UC Santa Barbara. The first night we are there we are just hanging out and drinking boxed wine (you know because we thought it was so mature ). Well, anyone that has been to UCSB or the Isla Vista area knows that police in the area are super-rigid and on a major power trip due to the insane partying that goes on there on a regular basis. So, anyway it's just me and four friends hanging out and all of a sudden the door busts open and its the cops claiming that they had received a disturbance report on us (ummm yeah...it's the middle of winter break, five girls in their p.j.s in a area comprised of a student population...there is no way we were called about disturbing). So, my friend, who is pre-law and a cop's daughter starting arguing that they can't just come in its against the law until the cop says "I looked in the window and saw that huge bong sitting on the table". My other friend, in her drunken stupor, comes in the room and misunderstood the cops and starts asking "What are we going to watch JAMES BOND?" This bong was not any of ours but my friend's roommate and it isn't just an ordinary bong but a $300.00 3 foot high hand-blown glass bong that he had left over break. Suddenly, the cop leaves and my pre-law friend (also very drunk) takes the bong and runs into a bedroom to hide it (what like the cop isn't going to remember it or realize its gone ) When he comes back in, he's so pissed that he threatens to take us in for under-age drinking so I, being the super paraniod one and fearing my parents' wrath, go get the bong and he makes me break it outside on the sidewalk. When I walk out side, I realize that their is a huge commotion next door and then see several cops carrying large potted plants out and I can't understand why. We only find out later that there was a huge drug bust next door and that the cops had heard us laughing and screaming and thought we were somehow involved like harboring the dealer who had apparently disappeared. Finally, like two hours later, after all being interrogated, we were let go with a warning for under-age drinking and a business card to call if we saw any activity next door.

It's funny now and a big joke between friends now but at the time I was so scared I was going to have to have my parents drive up from LA to pick me up in jail for drug dealing and underage drinking.

[angelic1]

I have had a bunch of strange ones.. but to me these top the list...

in 6th grade I was called out of class to the office. They told me to go in a certain room and wait. So I am sitting in there having no clue what I could have done wrong and the next thing I know the school's drug officer type person came in. He sat there questioning me forever about me selling drugs in school. I was just this young sixth grader scared out of my mind. He kept insisting that I was even when I was denying it. Finally he let me go.. my parents ecsp. my dad were so mad.. (he is the district chief of probation and parole in our area.. ) It was actually an older girl at school with the same first name

another time.. this was the beginning of freshman year.. I was in the study lounge on my dorm hall reading.. enters two police officers and a university offical with my roommate. They said that the have reason to believe that I have a wanted fugitive living in my room. So they go back with us and search my room.. this really freaked me out, but even more my roommate bc we hadnt know each other that long... turns out there was another girl at school with the same name as me.. thats who had the fugitive boyfriend.. we finally got it straight and she wasnt in school any longer..


mistaken identity twice..

[absolutuscchick]

I've never ever had a runin with the law. Never gotten a speeding ticket, nothing. I feel lame....