Poll: Have you been arrested?

[Fidatelo]

Since apparently 40-50% of US men have been arrested I'm curious to see what the percentage of FOFC-ers is.

[bhlloy]

Voted no, but where is the option for "would likely have been multiple times in the US as a teenager but British police are pretty chill?" :)

[cartman]

I've had a warrant out for my arrest, but never have been arrested.

[molson]

FOFC has no street cred.

[Umbrella]

Never arrested, but I grew up in an area where we would get shaken down a lot. Spent a bit of time cuffed in the back of a car, but never taken in.

[molson]

Never arrested, but I grew up in an area where we would get shaken down a lot. Spent a bit of time cuffed in the back of a car, but never taken in.

One thing about the study I cited in the other thread, the numbers were all self-reported, and a I wonder if lot of people would consider being cuffed in any capacity to be an "arrest." So maybe that 40-50% number is higher than those who are arrested in a legal sense.

[Fidatelo]

I had some cops question me in the office of my junior high school over an incident involving the lighting-on-fire of a mailbox, but none of us were arrested. I did have to serve 2 weeks office detention over lunch hours, though; a sentence handed down by my mother after over-ruling the principle's decision to let me go free.

[lungs]

I've been fined plenty, but never cuffed. Even with my marijuana possession when I was 21, I was cited and released.

Came close to getting hauled in for disorderly conduct on one of my underage drinking incidents but I always seemed to know how to push things to the limit without crossing that line where the cuffs come out

[claphamsa]

im the only yes out of 20? jesus people!

[JonInMiddleGA]

Arrested no.
Detained for a bit, yes.

edit to add: twice, in fact, on the detained part

1 being "cuff everybody til we sort 'em out" somewhat annoying since it was more personal than professional

The other being cuffed with everyone while they secured the scene, (there was a weapon involved, can't blame 'em for that at all)

[Lonnie]

I'm a yes as well. Surely there are more delinquents than just us.

[Umbrella]

The funny thing is, the stuff I could have been arrested for, nothing ever happened. The stuff I got hassled for was stuff made up for the sole purpose of hassling.

[BillJasper]

I had some cops question me in the office of my junior high school over an incident involving the lighting-on-fire of a mailbox, but none of us were arrested. I did have to serve 2 weeks office detention over lunch hours, though; a sentence handed down by my mother after over-ruling the principle's decision to let me go free.

Good for your Mom. Parents need to be more proactive. :thumbsup:

[BYU 14]

I'm a yes as well. Surely there are more delinquents than just us.

Yes unfortunately, stupid teenage stuff that ended in an assault charge, just glad I was not 18 yet.

[Karlifornia]

Yes!

[Blackadar]

I decline to answer. However:

Convicted? No. Never Convicted. - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGfzWwT-35M)

[BYU 14]

Wow we are (well most) a group of Choir Boys here :)

[Lathum]

I was arrested a few months before my 18th birthday for throwing a glass Snapple bottle through my ex girlfriends parents glass front door. Cuffed, had rights read, etc...

Had to go to anger managment and do community service plus restitution.

Just glad I wasn't 18.

[Easy Mac]

Never arrested. A cop threatened to arrest me in Myrtle Beach during senior week when I was 18. They were going into every hotel room and called us back while we were going to our car. Didn't even know they were searching for stuff until they called us back.

While they're searching the room, one of my friends says something and I laughed. One of the cops then asked me what was funny and threatened to arrest me if I made another noise. I said OK and he got in my face like he was going to hit me. Nothing happened.

Thankfully they didn't go into our adjoining room, because that's where our friends stashed our copious amounts of alcohol when they saw the cops walking around.

[Galaxy]

I've had a warrant out for my arrest, but never have been arrested.

:devil:

[CAsterling]

Questioned in murder, robbery and fraud cases, but never charged.
Cautioned multiple times by the British police, but never actually arrested.

[TroyF]

Had a bench warrant out one time because of a clerical screwup with the city. If I had been stopped before figuring out what happened, I could have been arrested. (I found out through a driving records check at work)

[kcchief19]

I've always wondered about the various reports that claim 30-50% of Americans have been arrested. I figured it is inflated by people who think a speeding ticket is "getting arrested."

About 15 years ago I was at work in the newsroom and read a wire story that 1 in 3 Americans had spent time in jail. I figured that couldn't possibly be right. There were 10 other people in the room and I asked for a show of hands of who had spent time in jail. Four hands shot up.

One guy had an unpaid ticket, got pulled over for speeding again and was given the choice of posting bail or spending the night in jail and getting released after seeing the judge in the morning. Another guy had an F-ed stunt where he and his friend thought it be funny to pull a fake machine guy on a guy (this was in the mid '90s). We had one former hippie involved in a demonstration. I think the fourth was mistaken identity.

I've had to do various background checks in my job in the past, and it's amazing how many people have legal incidents in their background above and beyond traffic tickets.

[korme]

You didn't earn your stripes unless you got an underage (or 2) in college.

Kidding of course, but yeah. Chalk one up.

[lungs]

You didn't earn your stripes unless you got an underage (or 2) in college.


Or 5?

[MacroGuru]

Nope, never been arrested and with amount of shit I stirred up in boring ass Provo, UT I am lucky.

[korme]

Or 5?

When in Rome?

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Got me once. Was going 20+ MPH over in a central Missouri county. If you lived in that five county surrounding area, you'd get the ticket + a court date (no booking). If you lived outside a five county area, you got booked and $400 bail just so you'd have to come back for a court date. Ended up coming back and they just charged me $400 for the ticket and kept the bail money as credit.

I blame my Mustang.

[Draft Dodger]

I've been arrested twice and one time spent a night in county jail (aka the most boring 18 hours of my life)

one arrest was on Christmas Eve. I came home from work and my idiot neighbor told me my dog had gotten loose and was roaming the stairway outside of our apartments. He put the dog inside my apartment and then called the police to, uh, I have no idea why he called them.

so, it's a little later that night and I get a knock on the door - a cop checking to make sure the dog was okay...and oh, by the way, I just happened to notice you have a bench warrant for your arrest (I had not paid the fine resulting from arrest #1).

now, picture this. it's Christmas Eve and Friday night to boot. I could pay a cash bail (he even offered to take me to an ATM) but I was tapped out. There were no bail bondsmen working so that avenue was out. My sisters ended up borrowing money from a friend and driving two hours to bail me out - if they hadn't, I would have ended up transferred to county jail for the long weekend. to this day, I still consider that arrest a bit of a dick move. Certainly, I deserved to be taken in, but knowing I'd likely end up in jail for 5 days because of the holiday I feel he could have easily done his "wellness check" a few days later.

[terpkristin]

I'm not a man, so the stat doesn't apply...I haven't been arrested but I did have a probation officer. Don't speed on a military base. And if you do, MP's don't care if you're a crying girl...

/tk

[Marc Vaughan]

Voted no, but where is the option for "would likely have been multiple times in the US as a teenager but British police are pretty chill?" :)

+1

[Danny]

I was arrested a few months before my 18th birthday for throwing a glass Snapple bottle through my ex girlfriends parents glass front door. Cuffed, had rights read, etc...

Had to go to anger managment and do community service plus restitution.

Just glad I wasn't 18.

I am glad Saldana forgave you

[Danny]

Im a bit of a goody, but I dont think I have ever done anything that I even could have been arrested for.

[Marc Vaughan]

You didn't earn your stripes unless you got an underage (or 2) in college.

You get arrested for underage drinking in the US? - seriously?

(I spent most of my early teen evenings drunk as a skunk, the police never batted an eyelid so long as you didn't cause trouble either for yourself or others ... if you had been 'caught' by the police they wouldn't have bothered with arresting you, you'd have had a ticking off and been shuffled home to your parents and the shame/punishment that would inevitably follow ..)

[cartman]

You get arrested for underage drinking in the US? - seriously?

(I spent most of my early teen evenings drunk as a skunk, the police never batted an eyelid so long as you didn't cause trouble either for yourself or others ...)

Usually not just for drinking, but it can happen. It is getting caught with a fake ID, trying to run away when the cops show up, being so drunk that you can't stand up, and things like that that likely will have you end up in jail when underaged.

[Marc Vaughan]

Usually not just for drinking, but it can happen. It is getting caught with a fake ID, trying to run away when the cops show up, being so drunk that you can't stand up, and things like that that likely will have you end up in jail when underaged.

No one really bothered with fake ID in England - under age you either found a pub which didn't ID or you purchased alcohol from a corner store and drank in the street (the favored drinking locations for teenage me & friends were an alley behind a club where you could listen to music or on the swings by a crazy golf course).

I was over 6 foot tall from the age of around 13 - so my job was to get the booze from an off-licence generally, one of my friends would play the part of 'younger brother' and help me choose things ... looking back on it, they undoubtably knew what we were up to, but didn't care.

[bhlloy]

You get arrested for underage drinking in the US? - seriously?

(I spent most of my early teen evenings drunk as a skunk, the police never batted an eyelid so long as you didn't cause trouble either for yourself or others ... if you had been 'caught' by the police they wouldn't have bothered with arresting you, you'd have had a ticking off and been shuffled home to your parents and the shame/punishment that would inevitably follow ..)

This is so true btw - I memorably got taken home twice in one night after a friends birthday party when I must have been 15 or 16 - first time we decided to go wake up someone by jumping into the back yard and banging on his windows and the neighbors called the police who caught up with us in a paddy wagon down the street, and then we met back up again and got caught by a patrol car rolling a tire down the middle of the motorway at 4am. They made sure I wasn't going anywhere after the second time and we all got into quite a bit of trouble for that one.

Ironically, the very first time I came to the US as a nineteen year old I got detained at Houston Airport by INS for 3 hours. Definitely sums up the different law enforcement attitudes between the two countries :D

[JonInMiddleGA]

You get arrested for underage drinking in the US? - seriously?

Varies, to a pretty wide extent IMO.

But my first thought (on your take US vs UK on this) was
"we're a much more driving oriented culture" ...

Urban areas here, probably tolerated better today if there's zero other offenses.

Used to be maybe opposite that, nobody ever got cuffed for drinking underage in my rural hometown: chewed out, taken home, poured into a sober friend's car, or whatever.

And then we started having to go to a lot of funerals. Even into the 70s in a mostly lower middle class area, not every kid had their own car. By the mid-80s virtually everybody had one. And the general consensus -- regardless of the numbers -- was that too many people were dying from the drink & drive combination. That started the crackdown, the p.r. weight of MADD added fuel to that fire.

[Marc Vaughan]

But my first thought (on your take US vs UK on this) was
"we're a much more driving oriented culture" ...
Yeah thats true - drink driving is taken VERY seriously in the UK, you don't drink and drive unless you want to get in serious trouble and lose your license.

PS - I've always been shocked at how 'accepted' drink driving is here in Florida, people look surprised at the fact that I won't drink after playing soccer because I still have to drink 15 miles home afterwards (I think I'm the only person out of maybe 20-30 most nights who doesn't drink).

[flere-imsaho]

I still have to drink 15 miles home afterwards

Tell me more about this. :D

[flere-imsaho]

I've only been stopped by the police once, and that was for just barely running a red light in Chicago at 5:30 AM on my way to work. They clearly checked my license for anything else, found nothing, and just gave me a warning.

That's it. I'm, er, somewhat law-abiding, even when I was a kid.

[Desnudo]

I've had a warrant out for my arrest, but never have been arrested.

Don't leave us hanging

[cartman]

I thought I shared that story here before. Back in college, I was elected as director of a 130 person housing co-op in Austin during my sophomore year. We planned a huge party, massive. A 12 hour+ party with 6 live bands scheduled and around 50 kegs bought. It was also a fundraiser, with the proceeds going to Amnesty International. $10 to get in, then all the beer and music you'd like.

As the date approached, I started to get a bad feeling about things. I can't point to any specific event, just an overall feeling of dread. The party started around 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. Probably had a couple of hundred people there at the beginning. The co-op building (Pearl Street Co-op) was a U shaped building, with a pool in the middle space. On a completely separate tangent, the building used to be a sorority house in the 60s, and Farrah Fawcette lived there for one year.

Around 5pm all hell broke loose. I was sitting out by the pool, and the 2nd band was about to start. All of a sudden there were several police cars pulling up out front. I glanced in and see them arresting the guy at the door who was taking the money. Someone comes running outside and said the police were asking for me by name. I quickly came to the decision that I wasn't going out like that, so I headed to the back of the property and went out the rear gate. As I walked down a side alley to head over to my girlfriend's place, I see them putting Alfonso, the ticket guy, into a police car.

So I make it over to my girlfriend's and call back over to the co-op. I ask one of the other co-op leaders about the current situation. He said they arrested Alfonso for selling alcohol without a license, they confiscated most of the kegs, and they were looking for me to bring me in as well for selling alcohol without a license, under-aged purchasing of alcohol (my name was on all of the receipts for the kegs), violation of fire code, and disturbing the peace. At this point, I figure the last place they will be looking for me is at the jail. So I tell them to pull $500 out of the till and meet me at the back gate of the co-op so that I could head down and bail Alfonso out. As for the party, there were still a few kegs left, so I told them to start things back up about an hour after the cops had left. If the police still ask where I was, they could honestly tell them I was at the jail. :)

I call the co-op lawyer and inform him of the situation. He meets up with me, and we get Alfonso bailed out. On Monday the lawyer worked out a deal to get the warrants lifted for me. We ended up going to trial, and ended up getting everything dismissed. We got around the selling alcohol without a license because the officers never asked for a beer. If they had asked for one, and we said no, you have to pay to get in, then we would have been guilty. Got the fire code violation dismissed because it turns out that the maximum occupancy had never been properly determined for the building. The under-aged purchasing of alcohol was dismissed because even though my name was on the receipts, it was simply due to the fact I was the main officer of the organization, and I didn't pick up the kegs and the payment was done by the corporation. And the disturbing the peace was dismissed because the lawyer successfully argued that loud parties are to be expected in a student housing area near a large college campus.

[Galaril]

Yes in the US and another country (when in the AF).

[Vince, Pt. II]

I've had a warrant out for my arrest, but never have been arrested.

I fall into this category.

Edit: My story is entertaining, but for far different reasons. In college, riding my bike to class one day I'm startled and nearly fall off my bike when a cop turns on his siren from right on top of the rear tire of my bike. I look around, annoyed, give the cop a dirty look, and continue riding my bike. After another second, I hear through the cop's loudspeaker "Hey you, on the bike. Pull over." I stop, look around and realize there is no one else on the road and I'm the only biker for a good pace, look at the cop and say "Who, me?" California Highway Patrolman (very, very far away from a highway I might add) gets out, walks over to me "Do you know why I pulled you over?" I'm ticked, and I'm not shy about letting him know. "I can fathom neither why you have nothing better to do than harass a kid on a bike several miles off of the highway nor why you pulled me over." "You ran that stop sign back there." Now, I'm at least a half a mile away from the nearest stop sign and there's no way in fucking hell this guy has been following me that long. There were also probably three hundred other bicyclists who ran the same stop sign within one minute of me doing it; this is a college town (Isla Vista, California) where no one drives ANYWHERE and EVERYONE rides their bike. Then again there's no question that I ran a stop sign. Long story short, he gives me a citation for running a stop sign on my bike. It's like a $30 fine, completely ruins my day because it's the stupidest fine ever, but in the long run is nothing more than an annoyance.

Fast forward a year or so. My roommate has been picked up for being drunk in public and is in the drunk tank. I head to the Sheriff's office to bail him out, and since I'm paying with my credit card the clerk asks to see my ID. She holds on to the credit card and the ID for a bit longer than expected, and then says to me "So, did you realize there's a warrant out for your arrest?" Stunned, I reply "I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be at the Sheriff's office if I knew that. What the hell is there a warrant out on me for? I consider myself a fairly law-abiding citizen." "Hold on, I can look that up for you..." she starts laughing. "It appears you have an unpaid...bike ticket." I don't know how, but my payment for the ticket didn't make it in the mail. Either the check bounced or I mis-labeled it or something...but I ended up moving between the ticket and the court date and had a failure to appear that eventually turned into a warrant. The $30 bike ticket turned into $300. Quite annoying.

[Honolulu_Blue]

I am glad Saldana forgave you

This never gets old for me.

[Thomkal]

I want nothing more to do with any of you delinquents :)

[Butter]

This never gets old for me.

+1

[JeeberD]

Yup. Arrested for drunkenly "exploring" an apartment complex that was under construction next to the one that I was living in. We were having a St Patty's day party and someone suggested we go over there, and I thought it was a good idea. That is until one of the guys decided to throw some boards through the windows that were just recently installed. Turns out the cops were already in our complex for a sexual assault, here the breaking windows, and come rushing over. I actually managed to avoid them and get back to our apartment without getting caught, but someone apparently ratted me out and they came the next day to pick me up. Spent a night in jail, had to pay restitution, and did a year of probation...

[dubb93]

Only time I ever had an interaction with a cop while I was committing a crime was when I was 19. Cop pulled over my buddy for suspected teens driving in a convertible. Really don't know why he pulled him over and he didn't elaborate. He breathalyzed all four of us. One of us blew a .01 and another a .03. Neither of us were driving. I blew the .01. Cost me almost $300. Didn't bother taking us in.

Same small town bored cops arrested another one of my buddies the day before his 21st birthday for underage drinking. Actually, it was less than an hour before he turned 21. He was on private property, but there was a noise complaint. He got mouthy when he realized he was actually getting a ticket and they ended up taking him in. We always rib him about being the only person to actually be booked for underage drinking while not being underage.....possibly on the planet. :)