What constitutes a criminal record?
I have several speeding tickets, which were legit. I was also falsely convicted of "Improper Driving", which was reduced by the judge from "Reckless Driving". I was doing 20-25 mph in a 25 mph. Actually, it was my own neighborhood and I was heading home. I pull into my parent's driveway and all of a sudden around the corner comes a Virginia Beach Police Car. He screeches in behind me and pins my car. By now, i am already out of my car and headed to the front door. The cop jumps out of the car and yells, "Show me your license and registration!" I am confused as hell, so I say, "May I ask why I am being pulled over?" He snapped and threw me up against my car and handcuffed me, dragging me to the backseat of his car. My parents come out and he goes for his gun and warns them to stay at the top of driveway. The cop gets in the car and calls for back-up. Or at least he pretended to, since none ever came. He then writes me a ticket for "Reckless Driving" and says he'll take the handcuffs off if I sign the ticket. I was livid and was refusing to do so, but he threatened to take me to jail, so I finally did. As I went into my parent's house I yelled out, "<Bleep> you, you piece of <bleep>!" I can only assume he did not hear me.
Of course, I fought the charge and went to trial. The cop, with the help of one of the city's prosecutors, testified first. Basically the only thing he said that was true was that I was there on that day. He said I was doing 45+ mph (no radar - he claimed he paced me) and kids were out playing, yet this was early evening at dinner time in late December when it was dark out, so no kids were outside. Plus, as a Physicist, I had taken measurements of the road and all of the curves, showing that it was impossible to achieve 45 mph in this particular stretch of road. He also claimed my mother went crazy and ran down to the car and banged on the windows crying for her baby. My parents were in the courtroom and I quickly asked if they could testify, which they did. One other little tidbit from the scene was that the cop asked my mom how old I was. When she said 25, he was surprised and said he thought I was 17 or 18. This is an interesting tidbit of information, because the Virginia Beach Police Department is notorious for harassing teenage drivers to try and "keep them in line". I know this, because my best friend's brother was a cop at the time in Portsmouth and interacted with them all the time. He warned me that they did this crap before my trial. So...anyway, the judge berates the cop, clearly believing he was lying, which he was, but then turned to me and said that I must have done something, so he reduced the charge to "Improper Driving". That ended up costing me over $3,000 in fines and additional car insurance premiums. This incident is why I am willing to go to jail for refusing to participate as a juror if ever asked. I believe in truth and honesty and our justice system clearly does not, so I am a conscientious objector to it.
Additional crap I did.
When I was in college, my best friend and I jumped onto the field at a Minor League Baseball Game during a rain delay and slid on the tarp twice. After we got off the field and ran for the exit, they made an announcement, that anybody going onto the field would be prosecuted. We had gotten a huge cheer from everybody. All of a sudden we hear more cheering, then resounding boos. The next person that went on got taken into custody. We made it to the exit where the head of the ground crew grabbed us. He said, 'If you ever do that again, I'll make sure you pay!" We said, "Okay...no problem!", and headed to our car. What a rush.
While at college at UofL I worked in the Nuclear Physics Lab. My best friend was in school in Halifax, Nova Scotia and we used to send each other crap via mail. For those of you youngins', that would be snail mail. The Internet did not exist yet. Well...the Post office was always dinging up and crushing our packages, so we would right stuff on there like do not bend or crush. One day, I left the lab to go to the Post Office and I thought, "Hey...wouldn't it be funny to write that the package I was sending contained Nuclear Material and to not crush or it or else?" So I did! Well, that was a big <bleeping> mistake. I mailed the package with no problems, The people at the counter laughed and took my money. I went to class and a few hours later came back to my dorm. In that three hours, the Postmaster General from Cincinnati had made his way to Louisville and the authorities had been in contact with my family, my friend's family, and even my girlfriend and her family. The Postmaster General was waiting for me at my dorm and took me in for questioning. The package was sitting in a bomb shelter off the Watterson Expressway. I had to authorize them to open it up and prove it was just a CD and a check for some hockey sticks my buddy had bought me. The Postmaster General believed me and let me know that they were hunting down someone who was sending bombs through the mail, which would turn out to be the Uni-bomber. It was not public knowledge at the time that they had linked his bombings. Had I known that, I may have had a second thought about my choice of words on the package, but then again, maybe not. I got off with a well heard warning! Imagine if I had done that today?
My final offence was the Pac-Man sticker confession I made earlier, but I had no intent of actually stealing them. I just panicked when my "friends" bolted with their hands full of packs.
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I won?t tell anyone else how to be
You can be yourself, but just let me be me
Last edited by Trigger11 on 28 Aug 2007, 9:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
28 Aug 2007, 8:26 pm
