As a 17 year old I was walking home from my second job at 3am, about 2 miles from my house and I had a particularly rough day. The streets we're empty so when a cop drove by he stopped me, asked where I was going, coming from etc. and said I was acting funny. I worked masonry during the day at the time and then went straight to a night shift at a fast food place, so I was acting funny, I was absolutely exhausted. I told him that, and for a second I thought he might offer me a ride home. Instead he pulled out a breathalyzer and told me to blow in it, I said no because I just didn't want to, he called for fucking backup. Had 3 cops cornering me telling me to blow into the tube or else, I obliged knowing I hadn't been drinking and when it showed all 0s they said it must've been a faulty machine. So they threw me in a holding cell for a few hours before taking me to the hospital to take my blood, waited a while for the results and what do you know, nothing.
In the end the cop said he was going to do me a "favor" and just give me a bullshit ticket for trespassing instead of taking me to jail. Me being an agnsty 17 year old going on no sleep for almost 48 hours, I said fuck you and spit in his face, which resulted in a dog pile of 4 cops on top of a scrawny, 120lb teenager which left me with a nice gash on my head. They locked me in a holding cell again for another few hours before they just let me go, no ticket, no apology, nothing, just a way for them to kill some time I guess.
Sorry for novel, this triggered something in me that brought that night back to the front of my brain.
Jesus Christ. I believe you 100%. It's my experience that metro police are almost always where you find the unhelpful fucking assholes that fish for trouble. Sheriff's departments tend to (TEND TO) stock much more of the crowd of folks who got into law enforcement because they want to stop the bad guys as opposed to the type of people who jizz their pants about the thought of writing tickets to the homeless and beating the shit out of a disrespectful teen. God help you if the cop is wrong and they can see that they're wrong, because they'll never admit it and just lean on might makes right instead. You sure enough got to experience that.
There are some cops that are good people who really do just want to help, but I think that it either gets beaten out of them by the prevailing department culture across the US of "we're literally unironically at war with the populace", or they get run out of the department/job for not fitting in. Imo, that aspect of things has gotten noticably worse, not better. I'm sorry that happened to you.
As a 17 year old I was walking home from my second job at 3am, about 2 miles from my house and I had a particularly rough day. The streets we're empty so when a cop drove by he stopped me, asked where I was going, coming from etc. and said I was acting funny. I worked masonry during the day at the time and then went straight to a night shift at a fast food place, so I was acting funny, I was absolutely exhausted. I told him that, and for a second I thought he might offer me a ride home. Instead he pulled out a breathalyzer and told me to blow in it, I said no because I just didn't want to, he called for fucking backup. Had 3 cops cornering me telling me to blow into the tube or else, I obliged knowing I hadn't been drinking and when it showed all 0s they said it must've been a faulty machine. So they threw me in a holding cell for a few hours before taking me to the hospital to take my blood, waited a while for the results and what do you know, nothing.
In the end the cop said he was going to do me a "favor" and just give me a bullshit ticket for trespassing instead of taking me to jail. Me being an agnsty 17 year old going on no sleep for almost 48 hours, I said fuck you and spit in his face, which resulted in a dog pile of 4 cops on top of a scrawny, 120lb teenager which left me with a nice gash on my head. They locked me in a holding cell again for another few hours before they just let me go, no ticket, no apology, nothing, just a way for them to kill some time I guess.
Sorry for novel, this triggered something in me that brought that night back to the front of my brain.
Jesus Christ. I believe you 100%. It's my experience that metro police are almost always where you find the unhelpful fucking assholes that fish for trouble. Sheriff's departments tend to (TEND TO) stock much more of the crowd of folks who got into law enforcement because they want to stop the bad guys as opposed to the type of people who jizz their pants about the thought of writing tickets to the homeless and beating the shit out of a disrespectful teen. God help you if the cop is wrong and they can see that they're wrong, because they'll never admit it and just lean on might makes right instead. You sure enough got to experience that.
There are some cops that are good people who really do just want to help, but I think that it either gets beaten out of them by the prevailing department culture across the US of "we're literally unironically at war with the populace", or they get run out of the department/job for not fitting in. Imo, that aspect of things has gotten noticably worse, not better. I'm sorry that happened to you.