Tag Archives: police

My Night in Jail

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In 1990, we had our house remodeled. The kids were all off on their own. To avoid staying in the mess during a six-week remodel, Ken and I decided to live aboard our sailboat Wind Dancer, which we moored at the Elliot Bay Marina in Seattle. We commuted from there during the week to our jobs in Bellevue. It was truly a wonderful summer. The remodel ended up being closer to three months – as remodels are wont to do. Sitting on the aft deck of the boat in the evening with a glass of wine, watching the lights come on all over the city, reflecting squiggly colored lights in the inky waters, was a magical experience. All was well and we were content.

My cousin came to town, her first time in Seattle. She stayed with my brother’s family since we obviously couldn’t accommodate her and her two kids on our boat. I wanted to show her around when I could, so we made a date for the weekend to go out to dinner and a little tour of the city.

We went out to a nice dinner, then I drove her to see some of the interesting sights and viewpoints. Summer evenings in Seattle are light until very late. Afterward, I was going to take her back to Bellevue to my brother’s house.

It was 11:00, night had come, and the streets of Bellevue were dark and empty. We came to a stop sign at the intersection where I would turn from the right lane to go to my brother’s, but I decided to turn left to show her something of interest that I had forgotten. I turned left from the wrong lane just as a police car drove over the hill behind us, and I knew they spotted my illegal turn. Again, there were NO other cars on the road in any direction, and I didn’t see the police car because it didn’t come over the rise of the hill until I was halfway through my turn. I knew they would stop me, so I immediately pulled over to the side of the street after completing the turn. Sure enough, the lights went on, and the police car pulled up behind me. A young female officer got out and came to my window with her flashlight.

“You made an illegal left turn. Let me see your license and registration.”

I pulled my driver’s license from my purse, got the registration from the console, and handed them to her.

“Have you been drinking?”

“Yes, I had a glass of wine with dinner an hour or so ago.”

“Ok. Get out of the car and take a breathalyzer.”

Now this is where things went wonky. Not more than a month before, Ken and I had dinner with an attorney friend of ours, and he mentioned apropos to nothing, “Don’t ever take a field sobriety test. They aren’t reliable. Go to the police station if they insist on a breathalyzer.”

“No”, says I. “I won’t take a field sobriety test.”

She was visibly surprised that I refused.

“Just wait in the car, I’ll be right back.”

She went to her car and was on the phone. Within two minutes, three other police cars appeared. My car was surrounded, one behind me, one in front of me, turned to face me, one beside me blocking the street, faced the side of my car, and a fourth on the other side drove into the parking lot of the business next to where I parked on the street and faced my car. All their bright headlights were trained on me, and their roof lights rotated a merry spectacle. It looked like we were in a concert venue, and I was the star attraction. Again, I emphasize, there were no other cars on the street during this time.

The officer came back to my car. “Get out. You’re going to do a sobriety test.”

“Fine,” I said, knowing I wasn’t the least bit inebriated.

“Take off your shoes. Walk a line heel to toe with one foot in front of the other. Touch your nose with your finger.” Etc. etc. I took off my high heels, and I really don’t remember all her directions, but my nylons were being shredded. I did as I was told. Meanwhile, six other police officers were standing around me and my car. My poor cousin was stuck inside, wondering what was going on. I surmised that I somehow had been misidentified as a serial killer or terrorist. I was mildly amused by all the attention, but tried to keep a straight face, figuring humor at this juncture would not be well received.

After the drunk test, the officer said, “You are under arrest.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t follow orders, you were unbalanced, I think you’re drunk.”

There were six other policemen around me, and not one of them objected or said anything. I knew I’d done exactly what she asked. Now I was surprised.

“What am I supposed to do with my car?”

“The woman in your car can drive it to your house.”

“No, she can’t. Our house is under construction. I live on a sailboat in Elliot Bay. She is visiting from Kansas and doesn’t know the area. I was taking her to stay with my brother when I made the bad decision to turn from the wrong lane.”

“Okay, she can follow us to the station, and your brother can pick her up. She can leave your car there.”

It was beginning to feel surreal, but I had no choice with seven police persons surrounding me. The police station was only two blocks from where I was stopped. No big deal for my cousin to follow them to the station. I was handcuffed and put in the back of the patrol car. The seat was a molded bench with a back, not anything like a normal car backseat. Wow, you do have to duck your head to avoid getting bonked when you get in the backseat. Another learning experience. All their cars made a U-turn in the middle of the street (definitely an illegal maneuver), and my cousin followed. I reiterate – there were NO other cars on the street. During the entire thirty or forty-minute procedure, only three cars came to that stop sign intersection. They could see the street was blocked by police action and quickly turned in the opposite direction from our circus.

My cousin called my brother from the station, and he came to get her. I was detained in the back and didn’t see him, so I couldn’t explain.  I was photographed, fingerprinted, and all my personal information was taken before I was ushered to a straight-backed chair against the wall. Two other people were sitting there in chairs. One by one, they were taken out. I don’t know why or where they went. Again, I was asked to take the breathalyzer. Now my stubborn streak kicked in. I declined the offer. Three or four police quietly conversed behind the desk with the arresting officer. I watched the goings-on with interest. They were obviously prepping her. Meanwhile, two drunks were brought in separately – two obviously drunk men weaving their way with officers holding them up. I watched as they were booked, etc. Couldn’t they see the observable difference between those drunks and sober me? An administrator type came over to me with a piece of paper.

“Sign this,” he said.

“Ok. Let me read it first.” I read it, and it had to do with agreeing to the charges and waiving my rights. After over a thirty years passage of time, I don’t remember exactly what the document was, but upon reading it, I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to sign.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m not drunk, and this doesn’t appear to be something I want to sign. Can I make a phone call?”

“Do you have an attorney?”

“Yes, I’ll call him.”  At that time, we didn’t have cell phones, so I could not reach my husband on the boat for advice. I called our attorney friend, the one who told us not to do a field sobriety test. Unfortunately, he was asleep as it was about 1:30 am, so he didn’t answer his phone. On top of that, Bob is a real estate attorney, not a criminal defense attorney, so he probably wouldn’t have been much help.

“Well, I guess I don’t have an attorney.”

“We’re going to put you in a cell, now.” Two officers walked me down a hall to a nice, clean beige cement room with a sink, toilet, and bench-like cement ledge on the wall. They took off my handcuffs. The front of the cell was bars, just like on TV.  I wasn’t upset by the turn of the evening events, secure in the knowledge that I was not drunk. I was more curious and mildly amused. What would be next on the menu of procedural absurdities? Would I be strung up by my manacled hands like a ham with a lash applied to my naked back until I confessed to treason?  Ah, maybe a bit too dramatic.

I was in the cell for a while. Time was a blur. There were no clocks visible, and I don’t wear a watch. I was sleepy, but the concrete ledge didn’t invite sleep, so I sat on it leaning against the corner of the wall. Finally, an officer came to my little room and told me he would take me to the phone; they had the name of a public defender who would talk to me. I followed him and called the number he gave me.  The officer never left my side. The public defender (I’m sure awakened from his sleep and not in the best mood) said I was obligated to take the breathalyzer test and that I could call him the next day, and he would explain everything to me.

I took the breathalyzer, and they put me back in my cell.  An unknown amount of time again went by before they came to get me. The officer said, “Here are your keys, your car is by the front door. We will contact you about your trial.”

“What trial? I’m not guilty of drunk driving, only an illegal turn. Can’t I pay the ticket and go home?”

“No, you are charged with drunk driving, and you refused to sign the charge document, so it has to go to a judge.”

“What did my breathalyzer show?”

“You blew .01, that is why we are letting you drive home.”

“But I’m still charged with drunk driving?”

“That was what you were arrested for; now it has to be adjudicated.”

By that time, the sun was up. I drove to the marina and told Ken the whole story. He was surprised, but relieved to know I had been in a safe place staying out all night. I went instantly to sleep. Rocked by the boat’s gentle motion, I slept about four hours.

My trial was set for several weeks from that night. In the meantime, I met with the attorney who said I wouldn’t be found guilty of drunk driving but of reckless driving. It was the harshest thing they could legally charge me with, instead of a simple illegal turn. The police were unhappy with my attitude. The arresting officer was a rookie, and I had made her first arrest a nightmare.

By the time of the trial, we were back in our beautiful newly remodeled home. The night before my trial, I decided to dye my hair. I don’t remember the exact reason, but I did try to dye my hair. The next day, my hair was pink. I called my daughter and said, “Help, I have to go to court, and they’ll probably rearrest me for some obscure infraction if I show up with pink hair.” She called her good friend, who was a hair stylist, and together they got my hair back to a reasonable hue.

At the trial, the six policemen sat directly behind me as I waited for my case to be brought up. I waved and smiled at them. They didn’t respond. Were they trying to be intimidating? Why would all six men take time from their real work to watch my trial? The arresting officer testified with untruths. She indicated I got my registration out of the glove box, but I kept it in the console between the front seats. She said I was wobbly when I did the drunk test, I wasn’t. I finally got the clue about one of the reasons she thought I was drunk. She said my eyes were red and weepy. That was true. I had been with my cousin for several hours, and she was a smoker. She smoked in my car while we drove around, and my eyes burned from the cigarette fumes. I was called to testify and pointed out the officer’s mistakes about where the registration was, and that she said I was wobbly when I knew I was steady, and my eyes were red, but it was from cigarette smoke, not alcohol. I added that I blew a .01 on the breathalyzer, so I couldn’t have been drunk anyway. The judge said I had to pay a fine for reckless driving, but it wouldn’t stay on my record if I didn’t get any moving violations for a year. Then I had to pay the attorney a ridiculous amount to represent me with a pro forma script he could have recited in his sleep. Theater of the Absurd.

And that is the story of my night in jail.

The Power of Words

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Words have consequences.

Just as I wrote in my blog post about Captain Hershey on January 29, 2024, words have consequences. I had three interactions with then Officer Hershey in a two-year period. The first contact was the most impactful. He was the epitome of what a policeman is. He understood in the deepest way what it means to serve and protect, and the power he had to serve with his words, not with physical interactions.

If Officer Hershey had given me a speeding ticket and sent me on my way that morning, I would have paid the ticket, cursed under my breath, forgotten him, and probably sped down the hill again. Instead, he told me with his words that I mattered, that my speeding had consequences beyond the law. In short, he said, “Do you love your husband? Call him and take him to lunch. It will cost what this ticket should cost. Tell him you are sorry for endangering yourself.” I was immediately taken from the momentary annoyance of getting a traffic ticket to the bigger picture. My speeding on a hazardous road had consequences for someone other than me. I was endangering myself and impacting my husband. His words made a huge difference. I never went down that hill again (safely, I might add) without thinking of Officer Hershey and his words.

As a young mother, I occasionally told my kids exaggerated stories to make a point. One day, when they were about five, seven, and nine, I was talking about being self-sufficient. I think I was trying to show them how to make their own lunches. I said in an offhand way that when they turned twelve, they would be out of the house and had to prepare for it. I said they would be on their own. Our oldest understood the hyperbole, our youngest didn’t really care and blew it off, but our sensitive middle child took it to heart. Days and years passed, and on our eldest daughter’s eleventh birthday, I found Shari in her room crying.

“What’s the matter? Aren’t you going to help me get ready for Karen’s birthday party?”

“I feel so bad,” she said.

“Why?”

“She only has one more year to live with us.”

“What?”

“She has to leave when she is twelve. That’s what you told us.”

Click click click went my brain. I very vaguely remembered saying something like that. I never thought any of them would take it seriously, and think we would really kick them out of the house. At first, I thought it was funny that she believed me, then I realized she had lived with the burden of my words for two years. What kind of monster would hurt their own child with that kind of threat? Shari was devastated, and so was I. It took a lot of hugs and reassurances from both my husband and me to let her know she would determine when she wanted to move out at some point in the future. She said she would NEVER leave us. A smile returned to her pretty face, and her heart was lighter. The birthday party was on, and everyone was happy.

It is critical for all of us to choose our words, whether written or spoken, with care. We can impact someone for good or ill. That’s not to say you can never be critical, but there are words that can help even when you have a negative message. 

Wonkagranny Blog Post January 29, 2024, Officer Hershey

Listen, if you have a moment, to the Toastmasters Winning Talk by Mohammed Qahtani about the power of words.

The Power of Words by Mohammed Qahtani

And read the short story based on a childhood memory on Tom Chester’s blog Turn-Stone.

A Sack of Frogs

Adventure in Avignon

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In 1999 my daughter, Shari, and I went on a European excursion. We visited England and Scotland, then took the EuroStar (a train that dives under the English Channel) to France. We are both Francophiles so the very air of France and especially Paris made us giddy. I had been to France previously, and it was exciting to share it with my daughter on her first trip. Our final destination was Barcelona to visit our niece and her husband, Disa and Pedro. After a few days in Paris, we took the Eurail to Avignon intending to drive the rest of the way exploring Provence.

Avignon is an ancient city in southcentral France, walled in by the Romans in the first century and used as a fortress over centuries. It served as the Vatican City for the Popes in the 14th century. The impressive gothic Palais des Papes was the residence of seven successive popes. Avignon is on the banks of the Rhône River with a bridge across the river that became popular in a folk song describing people dancing across the bridge, “Sur La Pont D’Avignon”, a song every French child knows and anyone who studies the language is taught.

Our adventure in Avignon is the set piece of this story. The third day after looking around the city we decided to take in a movie. It was called Drôle de Père in French or Big Daddy in English. We went to the theater, bought our soft drinks and our choice of sugar popcorn, caramel popcorn, salted popcorn, or cheese popcorn. I got salted, Shari chose caramel. We watched the hilarious antics of Adam Sandler trying to impress his girlfriend with “his son”, who was actually the five-year-old son of his friend. It was dubbed in French and watching it made every line even funnier.

After the movie, we returned to our hotel before we went out to see more of Avignon. I checked for my purse. I had put it in the back of the closet. It was gone, stolen from our room. Shari had her purse with her. I didn’t want the whole bulky purse so only took my waist pack with my wallet and passport. Our airline vouchers for the prepaid return tickets home and our prepaid vouchers for the rental car we were going to drive from Avignon to Barcelona were gone.  Personal items including my grandmother’s mother-of-pearl rosary beads were GONE. I was most upset about the rosary beads because it was the only treasure I had that belonged to my beloved grandmother, irreplaceable. But, of course, we were very concerned about our travel vouchers. How were we going to get to Barcelona? Was I going to have to call Pedro in Barcelona to bail us out? How would we return to the States?

Shari has some college French, and I have high school French. Enough for us to limp along in Paris where English is universally used in tourist locations. In smaller towns, there are not as many people who speak or understand English. We went to the hotel concierge and told him of our dilemma.

“Ah, madame, je suis désolée,” he said, “Vous devez vous rendre à la police et faire un rapport.”  (So sorry. You must take yourself to the police to make a report.)

I wanted to say, Monsieur, it must have been an inside job – someone from your staff who had access to our room – but I didn’t have the words nor the inclination to argue with him because I wanted to get to the police as soon as I could.

A police report! Oh my, what would that look like? Visions of American TV shows about police departments, chaos, and disinterested officers taking down statements with a yawn if they didn’t include murder. How would I get across the urgency of our need to recover our paperwork quickly so we could continue our journey? We were expected in Barcelona in five days. Not a lot of time to hang around police stations and wait for someone to take notice. Besides it would all have to be done in French! Oooo-la-la.

Off we went to the address given for the Commissariat de Police. It appeared to be a storefront operation, not a big imposing building. We walked through the glass door, no security. A young man greeted us from behind a glass-topped desk and we did our best to explain to him why we were there. Two or three other uniformed men were in that front office.

“Eh bon, tellement désolé que vous ayez été volé” he calmly said. “Nous pouvons vous aider.” (Ah, good, sorry you were robbed. We can help you.) I felt this was not the first time he’d heard a story like ours.

He ushered us into a glass-enclosed office. He offered us seats in front of the desk. No one was in the office.

This is what we saw: a simple wood desk with nothing on it except a telephone; totally clean, no papers, no files, no pens, nothing; a padded desk chair behind the desk. We sat in two padded folding chairs. A couple of bookshelf units stood against one wall, only a few (I mean three or four) books or notebooks in each unit, the rest bare shelves; no computer, no printer, no file cabinets, no clutter. I began to look around.

I said to Shari, “Do you think this is a real police department? Are we on candid camera? Is this a spoof for foreigners? Where are the criminals waiting to be jailed? Where is the chaos of an active police station? It looks like a movie set before they holler ‘Roll ‘em’. It’s just too quiet to be real.”

Enter a young man in a uniform – central casting, tall, blond, and beautiful. He smiled and offered a handshake. In halting English he said, “I’m sorry your trip has been interrupted by this mistake.”

“Mistake?” I’m thinking.

“Ce n’est pas un mistake,” I said. “It was a robbery, and we lost all our papers for our trip. We are expected in Barcelona in five days and then we return to the U.S. in a week.”

“Oui, un vol, excusez-moi.” he continued calmly. (Yes, pardon me, a robbery.)

Our discussion went on with him speaking in French with an occasional errant English word and me speaking in English with an occasional fractured French word. Lots of gestures accompanied the conversation. Shari did her best to translate here and there. The policeman seemed to understand everything we told him but was not making any notes or looking for forms. He did ask to see our passports.

Finally, he said he would sign a police report, and we could take it to the rental car agency to get our car. He assured us that it would also be enough evidence to have airline tickets reissued. Not to worry. He was completely unruffled, and matter-of-fact. Wait! Wait! Where was the investigation? Where was the fingerprinting? Where was the drama? Drôle indeed. I wondered if this was some kind of setup, some kind of con to make tourists relax before they laid down a hammer and charged us oodles of dollars to get out of their country.

After all, the French have a universal reputation of being haughty, rude, and nasty to foreigners. That had not been my experience on my previous trip to France, but there is always a first time, and this time was serious. Could we count on their assistance?

A one-page printed report was issued within fifteen minutes. We left the police station, still shaking our heads at what we perceived as the unusual calm we encountered. We went directly to the rental car agency. I explained our situation and showed them the report, preparing for an onslaught of questions and requests for proof beyond the report. They asked to see our passports, then handed me the keys to the car. It took less than ten minutes.

It still felt surreal. To be in a foreign country, being robbed of all our paperwork and still being allowed to rent a car so simply. It takes more effort to rent a car in my hometown.  

Gleefully, we left with our car. It was a Ford KA, a subcompact city car. Too small to be called a KAR – like half of a VW bug. No backseat, it was barely big enough for Shari, me, and two suitcases. We zipped along the freeway and through small towns like a gnat on a summer breeze. It was great to park. We fit anywhere we wanted, almost like a motorcycle. Each time we returned to our parked KA, I was surprised to find it still there. It was so small I could imagine someone coming along and picking it up like a child’s toy.

We stayed another day in Avignon then left for a winding trip through Provence and Occitanie along the southeast coast. We visited the cathedral in Nimes. We stayed a night in a nearly deserted resort town on the Mediterranean, Palavas. It was past the tourist season, being mid September, and all the hotels were closed. One very nice hotelier offered us a room overnight without any services. We were the only ones there. We ate a simple meal in a small restaurant on a canal that led to the Gulf of Lion. Fishing boats were docked along the edge of the canal. We visited the castle in Carcassonne, learning its quaint legend, and stayed in Narbonne; got lost trying to find a public bathroom; looked for carousels in each little French village (they all seemed to have one); and, Shari got to eat at a Mickey D’s in France. We crossed the Spanish border without a border check, arriving in Barcelona safe and sound, welcomed by a round of warm Spanish hugs and kisses from our family. We left Spain on schedule with no issues over airline tickets, just a very small fee. All that is another story or two…