No Good Deed …

And that’s that, I guess… The DA has dropped the charges. This actually occurred earlier this month but I never bothered to write anything about it. The lessons learned from this ordeal: 1) never fight the power when too inebriated to remember the details; 2) the activity you get involved in isn’t nearly as important as who you surround yourself with whilst partaking of aforementioned activity – you never know when you’re going to be needing to rely on the ability of these others to make correct decisions; 3) the police don’t care about anything beyond the present (they’re actually very short-sighted in their decision making processes) and I suppose this is an inevitable circumstance with what their jobs entail – not necessarily good, but somewhat expected; and most importantly, 4) private legal counsel has become a necessity in this country if you even have a prayer at getting any sort of justice.

Granted I am still relying on quite a few assumptions here. I still have absolutely no recollection of the night I got my ass thrown in jail; however I have received and reviewed police reports from both the Longmont Police Department as well as the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office. The report from Longmont mentions that the officers were speaking with Todd after his accident on my cell phone. I guess that explains the calls that were logged on my phone from Todd lasting somewhere between 3-5 minutes in length. It also mentions that they were, with the help from the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, able to find and pick up Todd later that morning. They don’t really say too much about me other than that I was intoxicated. Nothing was mentioned about transporting me anywhere and I’m still a bit fuzzy on why or how I even ended up at the ARC (Addicts Recovery Center) in Boulder.

The Boulder County report is much more interesting. It starts out with two officers responding to a call from the ARC about a client that was brought in by Longmont PD (me) getting unruly and “out of control”. It appears that I was not cooperating with the concept of staying in my room and “sleeping it off”.

Now here’s where I start making some assumptions on exactly what was going on. First off, I’m pretty sure that I was tricked into being taken to the ARC by the Longmont police. I can guarantee that I would not have volunteered to go there being that I had a perfectly good room (which I was actually paying for) in the hotel where the Longmont police first met me. Perhaps they suggested I join them in their search for Todd who, as you remember, had recently crashed his car somewhere in the foothills? I have no idea exactly what occurred, but the response by the Boulder Officers at the ARC was noted as occurring at 2:01 am. As a reference, this is about an hour and a half after the calls logged from Todd on my phone. As one more data point, the employee of the ARC stated that he was trying to get me to cooperate for 30 minutes prior to calling the police. This leaves somewhere around an hour for the Longmont police to pick me up at the Radisson Hotel in Longmont and drop me off at the ARC in Boulder (at most a 15 minute drive away).

It’s all speculation by me; however how exactly was this hour spent? Did we (the Longmont police and I) actually look for Todd for a bit before they decided to drop me off at the ARC? Was it a straight shot from the hotel to the ARC? Did I resist this ride (even verbally)? If I did, it wasn’t in the police report… You see, this is the hole in the story that I’m afraid will never be filled. If the cops would have just left me at the hotel everything, at least for me, would have been fine. I would have done exactly what I was planning on doing and slept off the booze in my hotel room. Sure, I’d still have the huge hangover the next morning; however it wouldn’t be experienced in jail. Nothing would have been different for Todd either – the police would have found him regardless of whether or not I was taken to the ARC. It seems to me that I did my part in helping Todd from what was written in the Longmont Police Department’s report. Who exactly were they “protecting” by taking me in to the ARC??? Nobody!

So I now understand why I was so pissed off about being at the ARC. Whether drunk or not, I wasn’t endangering anybody. I had a place to sleep that required no more than me stumbling back to the room (no driving was needed) and I’m absolutely positive that that’s what I would have done if given the opportunity. On the contrary, I found myself held captive in some strange building in a completely different city. I did not need to be there and I’m damn sure that I was making that point known to my captors. The result of this is that I ended up getting myself thrown in jail. The Boulder County Sheriff’s report reads like a standard episode of C.O.P.S. I played the typical drunkard and the cops played the classic roles of good cop / bad cop. I was swearing up a storm being asked to cooperate by the good cop and having the bad cop forcefully make me cooperate when I refused to on my own. The black eye and bruised arms must have been gifts from the bad cop…

An interesting side note here is the fact that “Verbally antagonistic” was checked off under the “Triage Questions to be asked by Arresting Agency” section of the police report. The actual question for this response is, “Which best describes arrestee’s behavior with arresting/transporting officers…” The three unselected answers were “Cooperative”, “Non-response” and “Combative”. “Verbally antagonistic” was checked. I don’t know … it just seems to me that I damn well better have been “Combative” to justify the way the “bad cop” decided to handle me… I guess we don’t actually have complete freedom of speech if the cops are allowed to physically injure a suspect being verbally antagonistic.

BUT … it’s all speculation. The bruises were real and I still don’t have any answers for the apparent needle marks on my right arm; however taking speculation from a guy that has no actual recollection of the night’s events to court on a civil case would lead nowhere good. In my mind, it’s all over with now. My spotless criminal record now has a slight blemish. The DA dropped the charges however the arrest remains on my record. I don’t think it’s going to cause any issues in the future but it’s there. It appears that I was, at least in some way, doing my best to help out a friend in need which resulted in my spotlessly clean criminal record acquiring a spot. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess…

bis später,

Coriolis