Times you were fuzzled over by the police.

[EHKOS]

My mother had a psychotic break, too early for me to be up, so I woke up with a 9mm in my face. They were doing their jobs well for the most part, albeit some of them were not very professional with their words.( There were A LOT of them) but at first I was in cuffs until we sorted things out. Whilst that was happening, an officer came out from sweeping the house with a shotgun, the one they keep in the trunk of the cruiser. The guy who was questioning me asked it if it was mine. I was so pissed off, luckily I was also dazed and worried enough to not back chat the guy. Then they forced me into an ambulance ride because they couldn't tell if I'd done something or THE CLEARLY PSYCHOTIC YOU-DON'T-NEED-A-BACHELORS-TO-FIGURE-IT-OUT woman was the culprit behind the call.

The other shit thing is they took my prop replica Hatori Hanzo sword and cane sword. The latter being technically illegal, but it wasn't sharp and is legal to own, just not off your property. Never got them back. Thank goodness they missed the $200 balisong/butterfly knife.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Well, I've known two sides of the police. How they treat the homeless (not well, if you need to ask) and how they treat business owners. My experience tends to be determined by how much money I have, and the right contacts on my phone that money can buy. Cops are human. Given ridiculous powers and a whole lot of autonomous agency. If you have the right people that can shine a light on a specific cop's history, they suddenly become a whole lot less threatening.

I don't mind police officers in general. But there is a stupidly low amount of transparency in how they operate. Ridiculously low community orientation or engagement. Then again, there are some brilliant cops that seek community engagement, work with troubled youths, and even go out of their way to put in suggestions and advocate for people living in particular rough parts in order to make them safer.

And then you'll get the cop that chokeholds a Mardi Gras attendee in hot pants and a tanktop, and throw them to the ground for no reason whatsoever. Videotape them, demand their names, post it online, send it to newspapers, make them famous.

 

[DementedSheep]

Most of my interactions with the police has been positive, searching for someone who went missing, dealing with break ins/assaults, talking someone down (while while mental health services cowered being bloody useless) ect. The worse I've had was them being a bit of a dick about minor traffic violations. For the most part they were kind and did more than expected.

But I know someone who when picking up a friend from the airport was pulled over by the police for parking tickets she didn't know she had. He was originally friendly and she agreed to go back to station and pay them which he said would be fine but when they got there the policeman tried to put her in a cell. She refused and walked away so he tackled her and smashed her face into the ground. She was charged with resisting arrest, convicted and put in jail. They refused to let her contact a witness from the police station "for their safety". While in jail they went through all her legal paperwork and correspondences with her lawyer in front of her (which is illegal) and even ripped some of it up. They destroyed her artbook for no reason. She was released from prison after a few weeks (because of space) and put on house arrest. She never got any of her jewelry or her bag back from the prison, they somehow "lost" it. While she was on house arrest the police told her if she did not answer the door immediately on their random checks they would just come back later and throw her ass back in jail so she ended up staying only in the main house out of fear. The original charge of unpaid parking tickets? Never mentioned after the initial arrest, not even sure if it actually exists. I take some of it with a grain of salt but know everything after the police taking her to the station is true. If you're wondering, why they would do this? The police in this region are well known to be thuggish and she was a vocal member of the freeman group (a group that believes that since they never signed the constitution the government shouldn't have power of them but they don't generally go around committing crimes, they just talk, swap conspiracy theories and occasionally protest things like toll booths)

 

[maninahat]

I've never had nothing but positive experiences with the police.

For my wife, it was a different story. The police in India serve a different function in the UK; they are basically bureaucrats whom you pay paltry sums of money in exchange to be allowed to break various laws. In her State, all new driving licences, for instance, have to be registered at a police station. Naturally my wife took a large stack of money to "ease" this process along. She was very surprised to find that the policeman obligingly stamped her licence without expecting a single rupee.
"Can't we bribe you just a little bit?"
"No thank you. It won't be necessary."

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Ah, so that's where you've been, sorry to hear that dude. I've never really had a bad police experience, so not much to add here I'm afraid.

 

[Fox12]

1). The time they pulled me over, and randomly searched my car for drugs. I asked why I was pulled over, and they said my brake light was out. It wasn't. Obviously they didn't find anything.

2). The time a cop followed me for about 30 minutes. When he saw that I was about to pull into my college, and he had failed to nail me for anything, he pulled me over anyway and said I was driving too close to the center of the line.

3). The time I was sitting by the lake with my friends, and a cop arrogantly walks up and asks if we've been smoking any weeds.

4). The time I was driving home in awful wheather, and I slowed down for safety. I was seriously scared my car would swerve or hydroplane, so I decided to play it safe. Suddenly a cop light shows up in my rear view, and I pull over. He then speed ahead of me, and turns his lights off.

Fuck the police. Fuck them.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

I'm going vet here, snip

You're going to put an animal down?

OT: I got a ticket for getting rammed by the daughter of a police officer :/ Otherwise I just got speeding tickets for speeding. I stopped getting caught for that.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

When I was eighteen I was heading out to Ullswater with a few friends for a fishing trip. We all had our rods, bait boxes, keep nets etc, but halfway to the lake we were stopped by the fuzz, who wanted to search us because "you look up to no good". Upon being searched, my gutting knife - which I had bought from a legal outdoorsman shop on my town high street - was declared to be half an inch over the permitted legal length for a blade and I was done for possession of an offensive weapon. Even though no court proceedings were brought against me, I have a pretty serious blemish on my permanent record.

For going fishing.

You can carry any size knife in the UK with a legitimate purpose. The 3 inch rule only applies if you don't have a reason to be carrying it at that exact time.

I bet you just accepted the caution, you should of gone to court or atleast spoke to a lawyer. The police may be there to enforce the law, but they don't actualy know all the details of it.

This was back in 1999, so the specifics of the law could've been different then, but yeah I got stuck for carrying three and a half instead of three. And I did just accept the caution - I had just moved out on my own and could barely afford to pay the rent, nevermind a lawyer. It's something I still feel pissed about today, no doubt in part because (as you say) I probably should've held my ground.

That having been said a great number of my friends have been screwed over by the fuzz, so it is possible that the Cumbrian force are just dicks. One friend of mine had his house broken into twice in one month, and the police said there was nothing they could do despite multiple neighbours coming forward to identify the robbers by name on both occasions. A lass I work with was verbally and physically threatened on a weekly basis by a stalker for three years but the local constabulary did nothing due to "insufficient evidence". I was brought up to have the utmost respect in authority and law, but it's fair to say that this attitude has waned somewhat in the twenty years I've lived in Cumbria.

 

[WolfThomas]

My fiance went violent and started hitting me.

I'm normally not a big grammar person but this is really relevant in how people read your story. Fiancee is the woman getting married. Fiance is the man. So when I read that I initially assumed it was male on female violence, not just because stereotypes but...grammar. Then when you mentioned that it wasn't male on female, I thought it was male on male violence, until the last part.

 

[WolfThomas]

Fair enough, the french e sneaks up on me. I will add the other e. Is that grammar or spelling? It's a rule of French origin, anyhow, it pretty much only applies to loanwords.

However, I personally see no difference between genders in domestic violence as far as culpability.

Its grammar I think. Correctly spelled word wrong context like there or their.

I'm not disagreeing with the last part, just suggesting a correction to avoid confusing the message.

 

[stroopwafel]

A while back I drove into this police roadblock. Now, I always keep my drivers license in my jacket but since it was hot and didn't have my jacket on(and was only like 3 minutes away from home) I forgot my license. So got pulled over and police asked for license and registration so I said sorry forgot license but please check plate number it's registered to my company. So I gave him address and all the additional details so he could confirm and he said yeah indeed info is correct but I still need to give you a ticket for driving without a license(or rather for driving without being able to show license).

The cop was friendly and all that but I still think he was an ass for giving me a ticket when he could easily see I have pretty much a clean slate when it comes to my driving history. That was 100 euros down the shitter. *sigh*

 

[Jandau]

I've never had a negative experience with the police. For the most part, getting stopped late at night for an ID check, maybe being a witness to an accident or a disturbance, etc. Cops were always courteous, professional and didn't make trouble. Even when they'd show up at my door due to a noise complaint, they never tried to boss me around, threaten me or overstep their authority.

And that includes the time I was a suspect in a kidnapping case...

One year I was vacationing with a bunch of friends by the sea, in a small island town. Since I was something of an early bird, I did most of the grocery shopping. The local shopkeeper decided I matched the description of the suspect in a current kidnapping case (mostly due to my ponytail) and reported it to the cops. This was on the last day of my stay there and I was well on my way back home when I got a call from my friends that a bunch of them were brought in by the police and that they were looking for me (my friends decided to stay a few more days). Inside 24 hours, I had cops at my door, looking for me. I invited them in, made them some tea, explained that I wasn't the man they were after, answered all their questions and they went their merry way. A few weeks later, one guy came by to follow up, also with no incident. They were well within their rights to cuff me, stuff me in the back of a police van and take me down to the station. They did no such thing.

Oh, and I live in a post-communist country in the Balkans...

 

[God'sFist]

Myself I've had good experiences with police in my area. My brother on the other hand has had some. My brother is a type 1 diabetic so when his blood sugar gets low it can affect him much like getting drunk so the police have pulled him over thinking he was drunk. He has also been pulled over because of the vehicle he was driving. I live in Idaho so we have a fairly large Hispanic population and unfortunately some drug dealers among them. So they stopped him because the car he was driving is similar to what what the drug dealers use.

I had my bike stolen from my house recently so I reported it but since I didn't have a suspect there wasn't much they could do. That's probably the worst thing. But I have had a police car stop traffic so I could cross the street that was pretty nice of him.

 

[DanielBrown]

When I was ~14 years old a lot of friends and I were in a public park on Valborg, a holiday where we light bonfires to keep witches away or whatever, so we decided to make a small fire. We were also very drunk.
A few cops showed up and they were kind. Told us we could keep our beer in spite of being under aged, but that we couldn't have a fire going. We thanked them and kept the party going.
A few hours later some skinheads showed up nearby and decided to make a small fire as well. All of sudden we were met with a police van blinding us with high beams. The same cops from before rushed out and dragged me behind the van. They started smashing me against the van while screaming "WHAT THE FUCK DID I TELL YOU?" straight into my ear over and over again, while bending my arm so far up I thought it would break. Eventually they threw me and a friend inside the van(he got slapped a few times when he asked what the hell they were doing).

He got pushed off in the middle of the fucking highway and I got thrown out in some town far away. I had no clue where the hell I was. Eventually found a subway and was able to make my way home.
The next day I learned that while we were in the van the cops poured beer inside my stereo and broke all my CDs. They also made those remaining carry the still smoldering logs down to the water, which was probably 200 meters away.
I was a rebellious, cocky shithead as a young teenager, but I think those cops went way beyond their authority...

On a related note; two of those cops actually took me in when I and that very same friend got busted for stealing beer from a supermarket(told you I wasn't an angel). They were among the smuggest fucking assholes I've ever met.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Snip

Um, I was talking to OP, since I didn't quote anyone. Not sure why you responded to me, if it's because I've never had an issue with the police, the climate in New Zealand is very different to the US in regards to how the police treat people.

 

[Ryan Minns]

I'm a tall broad shouldered man with a beard. The 3 years I spent at a service station serving them fuel was the only time I haven't been messed with. Though I now almost never leave my home which helps.

The most famous time though was once I was on my way home from a friends place after spending the night. I was stopped by 2 officers that told me I fit the description of a guy who just hit his girlfriend. I had no ID on me as I forgot my wallet and I was asked the exact same 6 questions again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again for over 30 minutes. As stated above, I am tall, heavy built with a beard and I was... 24 I think at the time. I am also white so when I learned the description was "A 16 year old extremely skinny aboriginal boy" I felt like going off my fucking head.

 

[Joccaren]

Father worked night shifts, slept during the day, a few years back. Had an accident at night, in the pooring rain, on a country road with no signs, no lighting, and in poor condition. Called emergency services to report the accident for legal purposes, and to organise a tow to come pick up the car. Was charged with poor driving for being 'too tired' to drive, rather than paying attention to the rather poor quality of the road, weather and point of time.
Ok police. Next time we just won't notify you of these accidents that we're supposed to [Fairly sure its a legal requirement].

Also been fined ~$200 for taking one step to cross the road before the green man changed over, and I literally mean one step. You get similar fines amd equivalent demerit points for being 2km/h over the speed limit as you would were you 10-15km/h over the speed limit [Thankfully never been hit with that], and various other things that really don't even count as misdemeanours. Its well known that the police in the area are just glorified tax collectors. Half of them even know it but can't do much about it, though in cases like my boss's where he and his sons were caught doing 100 in an 80 zone, running red lights, in illegally modified cars, since the police officer was a customer of work they just got let off.

Defs not as bad as some have it, but people like the police here as much as they like parking inspectors, as they're essentially the same shit.

Oh, and then there's the police officer down the street who, illegally mind, stuck traffic cones into the ground around the nature strip out the front of his house as he didn't want anyone parking there - a perfectly legal thing to do. Everyone in the street hates him because he's an a**hole, so the council was quickly notified and a couple of days later the cones were removed. He still harasses and threatens anyone who even sits in their car on the nature strip waiting for someone though. There are some nice police officers around here, but this guy, like many others, is not an example of one.