I saw the flashing lights behind me as I pulled over. It was close to 3am on Saturday morning, and I’d just dropped Andy home after a night at Urge, and co-owner Alan before that because his spine exploded without warning. I was the sober driver of the evening.
I’d received a message on my phone as I was turning a corner on a deserted road, and had pulled over about ten metres after the intersection, as soon as it was safe to stop. That’s when the flashing lights appeared.
Within seconds a burly police officer was at my window. He asked me if I’d been drinking and if I knew why I’d been pulled over – the standard opening gambit.
I responded that I expected it was something to do with my phone. I then attempted to explain that I was doing what I understand is expected under the law – if you’re going to use your phone, then you pull over first.
I wasn’t to get that far. Perry Mason proceeded to berate, intimidate and interrogate me for at least five minutes, interrupting me whenever possible and trying to catch me out on details: he’d seen me picking up the phone. He’d seen me using the phone. But I’d pulled over. But I was still on the phone. I was turning a corner and pulling over. But at what point did I pick the phone up?
At this point I thought we’d need CSI and a computerised re-enactment. I was starting to lose touch with reality. This guy seemed hell-bent on proving I’d not only been using my phone while driving – which I wasn’t – but that I’d committed some deeper, hellish crime that would only be uncovered by further questioning.
“I just want you to be honest with me.” “Let’s start back at the beginning.” “So you were on your phone?” “Were you using your phone, yes or no?”
I looked to his accompanying officer, a stony-faced woman who had precisely the same look a Jehovah’s Witness once gave me at the door when I told her I was an atheist. She thought I was going to hell, and so did this woman, so no help was forthcoming there.
By this stage, I was getting irritated. I started thinking about the underage drinking, wife-beatings and stabbings that were probably occurring across town right at this minute (when I checked the paper the following morning, sure enough there were). My anxiety levels were going through the roof, and this guy was making me crack.
“Look, I’m tired and I want to go home,” I said. “How do we end this?”
“How do we end this?” he scoffed. “By giving you a ticket, that’s how we end it, mate.”
“Fine. Give me a ticket.”
I didn’t care how much it was at this point. I wanted this man out of my face before I had a meltdown and got thrown in jail or had a CATT team called out on me. For obeying the law and pulling over before I used my phone on a deserted road at 3am.
“Can I have your driver’s licence?”
I obliged.
“What do you do for a living?”
My brain froze. What job do I tell him first? I spend most of my time writing, and it just somehow popped out:
“I’m a journalist.”
“A journalist?” he repeated with a raised eyebrow. Given the amount of bad press the police get, probably not the wisest occupation to admit to. “Who do you work for?”
“I work for the Mental Health Foundation.”
“The Men-tal Health Foun-dat-ion?” he repeated, as if he were a Ricky Gervais character talking to someone intellectually disabled.
I just nodded.
“Wait there,” and he and his companion headed off.
But I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, could I? I was so angry, so intimidated, I thought that if I don’t say something this is probably going to bring on an episode.
“Congratulations, you got your big one for the night,” I said.
He swaggered back to the car.
“Excuse me? What did you just say to me?”
Oh Christ, this is getting like Taxi Driver.
“I said, congratulations – you got your big one for the night,” I repeated.
He eyeballed me for a minute, then smirked and walked back to the car. “Pfft – got more than one, mate.”
They went back to their car to do their requisite series of checks or whatever the hell it is they do back there. It seemed like an eternity.
It was long enough for me to phone Andy, who after three rounds of ringing finally picked up.
I told him the whole story, including the most recent bit – “Oh god, you never talk back to a police officer,” he said.
About halfway through our conversation, the officer returned –on his own. He could see I was on the phone. As if by magic, his tone changed.
“Sir, we’ve decided we’re not going to give you a ticket, we’re going to let you off with a warning,” he said.
This is going to sound like I was being a smart-arse, but I swear to you I’d just lost 90% of my cognitive power at this point and it was taking me all my effort to form sentences. “Great. What’s the warning?”
“Don’t use your phone while you’re driving.”
“Thanks very much.”
“You’re welcome. You have a great night.” He may have even tipped his hat as he walked off, I don’t know – I was avoiding eye contact, because by this stage I was having difficulty breathing.
I put the phone back to my ear. “Have a great night?” Andy repeated, laughing. “Have they gone?”
I saw out the corner of my eye as the unmarked car did a u-turn and disappeared. “Yes,” I answered.
“Are you going to drive home now? Or come back down here?” I was literally a minute’s drive from Andy’s house.
“I’m sorry, I can’t move. I’m too scared to start the car,” I answered. And I was. The thought of even turning round and driving back to Andy’s house filled me with utter panic, and as for driving home – half an hour across town – forget it. I thought I was going to have to sleep in my car. I was immobilised.
“I’m coming up,” Andy said, and rang off.
A few minutes later he was there, having run up the hill. He offered to drive the car to get back to his place, but he was well over the limit, so we just sat there while he calmed me down enough to be able to start the car and drive it back down the hill to his house at 20km/h.
We sat there for another hour as I watched TV like a zombie, and eventually my fog of terror and anxiety lifted.
It was 5am by the time I got home and crawled into bed. Thank god for good friends.
One wrong move, and I really think I could have ended up in jail. I’d seen a comment on Tumeke! that the Arie Smith-Voorkamp case showed that there’s a big difference between how the police behave on reality shows and what they’re like in the field.
Based on one anecdote, I can’t possibly make any evidence-based comment on that.
My Perry Mason could well have been called to a job ten minutes beforehand that really upset him and I became the fall guy for it. Or, his silent witness could have been a trainee police officer and he was showing off what a big man he was in front of her. I don’t know.
What I do know is, we’ve all been in situations where the wrong thing said at the wrong time can turn an encounter ugly.
Words and the way we use them do have an effect. And as the Arie Smith-Voorkamp case has shown us, sometimes the consequences are far worse than a roadside anxiety attack in the wee hours of a Saturday morning.
Great information. Lucky me I ran across your site by accident (stumbleupon).
I have saved it for later!
I thoroughly and completely HATE pigs. I’m 58, have had more than enough self-caused interactions with them, also balanced with lots of times I used them to help me clear out the hookers from my neighborhood. There are so many completely screwed up PIGS among the police officers that the odds are totally skewed toward the fact that any given cop can be considered a PIG. The rare ones who are professionals also know they are the minority by a long shot, and they don’t get bent out of shape about citizens hating them because they know what PIGS are like and most of their co-workers are PIGS. They’re prejudiced about color, race, social status, and live lifestyles demonstrating to themselves and their cop friends how they are all sorts of other “better than you” crap. I HATE PIGS. My sweating, vibrating, shaking, etc. always get me put in cuffs because they are cowards and are afraid of me. UCK PIGS! They are now militarized at the same level that our National Guard used to be. And they are bringing drones to the skies of the USA. They are NOT your friends. They need to be treated as dangerous dogs running around without controls, able to kill you over nothing and get away with it.
Even though I left that comment a year ago, I just ran across it again while pruning my comment subscriptions. Noticed I left out relevant location information. I’m only talking from my experiences in Glens Falls, New York, U.S.A. as a teen, and in California (several locations) since 1976 as an adult. While I constantly read about and see vids about police violence against us in the “different-brained” population, my personal experiences are limited, to those geographic areas. (My avatar changes and doesn’t usually indicate my location. Sorry for not making that clearer, especially since my comment is so harshly critical. Finally, it has also been my experience that they (you-know-who) may seem nice, may be nice, but can turn on you dangerously with just a bit of peer pressure. It’s horrible here, nationwide, right now. One of my best friend’s wife became a PIG, they got divorced soon after because she couldn’t live with him in the home they’d created because PIGS don’t hang around such people and places and could be expected to drop by lots. Part of their self-policing, bonding and plotting. Cops are not normal people. That’s why most can only have cop friends.
The Police ARE intimidating, Chris – and more than just one or two play on their uniform, their power and their ability to control and detain us. I’ve tried being honest and upfront on the (relatively) rare occasion that I’ve done something wrong – usually speeding is my crime and I don’t mean by a lot, just a few km’s (here in Victoria, the width of a needle is enough to put you over the top – there isn’t the 10kph generous limit that you have in NZ) It has never made one iota of a difference (I must just have a bad looking face!?!)
I feel very anxious whenever I’m stopped by the Police BUT on the other hand, I’ve had several reasons to call them since I moved to Melbourne, and for all my personal issues, i.e. when i contact them and not the other way round, I have found them warm, personable and very helpful. Just a night ago I was walking my dog and noticed a very shady looking character jump a fence and then start shining a torch in an apparently empty house. I called 000 and within minutes the Police were at the scene and went bowling right on in. I didn’t stay round long enough to see if they were successful – but I guess my point is, it can so depend on the circumstances in which we encounter them how we experience them.
Let’s hope the next time you have anything to do with them, it’s from a more helpful, supportive perspective.
True, I wouldn’t want to tar all policemen and women with the same brush. Ironically, when I helped a friend last year who was taken to hospital after a near-suicide attempt, the police who took him there were the most understanding people he dealt with in the whole exercise. The psych team were awful.
I very much appreciate the illustration of your night that night. It sounds horrible, especially with the Arie case so recent – no wonder you were freaked out!
I feel the need to put forward my experiences as a balance though. I have been pulled over and talked to three times in the last few years (once for running what I hoped would be an orange light but was really quite red, once for unknowingly having a WOF out of date by a couple of days, and once for letting a passenger out at a no-stopping place). Each time I have found the police to be somewhat stern and closed (yet polite) on first approach, but when I’ve talked to them honestly and politely and they’ve had the chance to go back to their car and check me up on their system they’ve come back with a bit of.. perhaps relief, and empathy in their voices. My guess is that their first approach is one where they don’t quite know what they’re walking into so they put their tough face on, but with a more full view of your history (i.e. how likely you are to be doing something dodgy), and even a few minutes to consider the situation, they let their guard down and talk to you more like a person.
Two of the above situations were clearly my fault and I was aware I was doing something wrong at the time. Perhaps because I admitted fault the officers were more friendly to start with – perhaps the officer in your incident really thought he had seen you on the phone before pulling over. Or, perhaps you matched a description of someone they were looking for on another matter. I imagine at that time of Saturday night many police officers would have their guards up, and you’re right, there are a million things that could have happened before that to put him in a bad mood or like he felt he had to appear tough or right. Or, he could be a power-hungry arsehole looking to belittle someone. With the length of arguing and interrogation you described it does sound like he had a bit of a power trip going on. To be fair though there are arseholes in all professions, just most aren’t so powerful.
But yeah, so I hope (and I like to think) that the officer you were unfortunate enough to encounter that night was either a bad apple, or a good person pushed to their limit by other pressures you weren’t aware of. Thus I just wanted to illustrate my experiences too, because mine have all been so positive!
Thanks for all your work BPB. And if I may be so forward, thanks to most of the NZ Police as well. They cop a lot of flak, some well-deserved (none more so than the Arie case), but in one of my roles (Victim Support) I interact with a lot of them too, and I’ve found the majority of them seem to be nice, genuine people trying to do a difficult job in a constricting and political atmosphere.
Hope this isn’t taken badly – just wanted to balance it.
Lucia
I’m glad you have balanced it – I don’t want to dislike the police, we rely on them in times of deepest crisis and need to be feel that they’re approachable.
This encounter was just so surreal and out of proportion to my perceived “crime” that I just felt compelled to write about it, particularly because of the effect it had on me afterwards – just another example of the handicap of a mood disorder. My panic attack could just as easily have been prompted by a stranger in the street.
I had a fairly similar experience a number of years ago. I had pulled over on Scenic Dr to answer my phone late one night. A cop car pulled up and the officer came over and started questioning me. With his torch shining directly in my face. I could only see a bright orb – I had no idea what he looked like – very disconcerting in a “we-have-ways-of- making-you-talk” kinda way. I didn’t get a ticket but I got a hell of a fright.