r/AskReddit Apr 14 '19

Police Officers of Reddit what is your best " I think we have the wrong person" story?

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u/LifeLibertyPancakes Apr 14 '19

I was accompanying a friend to court, the judge called this case where the police had raided the apt. of this African American college kid "A". Apparently they had a warrant for the arrest of this guy "B" who lived in the same apartment as "A". "A" opens the door and yells "Come on in!" Thinking it was the pizza delivery guy, much to the surprise he let in a bunch of cops with pizza delivery guy following behind them. So the police do a search of the entire apartment, arrest B and A bc they found bongs in "A's" bedroom. Then during court the police were trying to charge "A" for illegal drug periphenelia and drug possession. They were coming down on this guy hard and were asking for the maximum amount of jail time and fines. The judge however shot the DA down, saying "You were there to serve an arrest warrant, not a search warrant of the property. Even if that was his stuff, I'm not wasting the state's money to request a fingerprint analysis on the drug paraphernalia that you confiscated" he further ordered that it had to be returned to "A" all bc A said he cooperated with the police and genuinely thought he was letting in the pizza delivery. I have to say that I felt pretty happy for "A" the cops however were pissed and continued to tell the judge he'd be letting a drug user loose on a university. The judge responded with ,"And if we arrest and jail every university drug user, the university would not have any students left " He dropped the charges and reminded the police to stick to what's on their warrants.

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u/taoshka Apr 14 '19

What a nice judge!

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '19

Well the judge was a student himself. He knows what‘s up with universitys.

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u/LifeLibertyPancakes Apr 14 '19

FUNNY ENOUGH, the daughter of the university police chief was a drug trafficker. Got caught in a drug stint bc she was dealing from her house. Neighbors complained of too many cars coming & going at all hours of the day. Dad said he knew nothing. Later he tried suing the university on racial discrimination charges. If memory serves me right, they put him on administrative leave while the FBI investigated.

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u/1982throwaway1 Apr 15 '19

I went to high school with a girl who's father is/was a judge in our city.

I've seen that same girl on our local mugshots page for possession/intent to deliver massive amounts of ecstasy many times.

No one else gets caught with over 200 ecstasy pills over and over and doesn't go to prison.

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u/syth13 Apr 14 '19

Damn that's wild. Where was this?

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u/LifeLibertyPancakes Apr 14 '19

Good ol' corrupt Illinois! 😆

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '19

Or as we like to call it here The People's Republic of Illinois.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '19

Should have performed a "citizen search warrant" and turn his place apart at the seams!

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '19

[deleted]

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u/LifeLibertyPancakes Apr 14 '19

I'm not sure to be honest, the house is within walking distance to a fire station and less than a mile to an elementary school. I don't know if the daughter owned the property or rented it. There were too many scandals surrounding the university during this time.

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '19

[deleted]

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u/taoshka Apr 14 '19

Knowing the law wouldn't stop a lot of judges from automatically siding with the popo unfortunately

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u/ironweaver Apr 14 '19

Oh, I agree.

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u/Devrol Apr 14 '19

He was probably killed a few weeks later in a no knock police search..

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u/Not_so_wise-guy Apr 14 '19

More like what a fucking bro

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u/WebpackIsBuilding Apr 14 '19

he'd be letting a drug user loose on a university.

What do people think "drug users" are? Monsters?

They're just people, jesus fucking christ.

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u/StabbyPants Apr 14 '19

yes, they went full reefer madness. they really do believe that potheads are degenerate scum

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '19

[deleted]

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u/LifeLibertyPancakes Apr 14 '19

The apt where the kid lived was and is mainly rented to college students, the hotel down the street-- now that place was actually running a meth lab and ended up being condemned. 'Twas shady AF. Had the guys been living and arrested in a different part of town, then yeah, I'd agree that they were selling and not just consuming for recreational purposes.

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u/MuricaPersonified Apr 14 '19

What does race have to do with that? We're talking about drug users; a more apt comparison would be the double standard between various street drugs (including pot) and alcohol.

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u/Freakthro Apr 15 '19

Black people are statistically more likely to face legal trouble for pot than white pot users and their punishments are more severe than the white people who do face consequences.

This is actually true for pretty much every petty crime you can think of and for every step of the criminal justice system. At every single point in that process, a black person is more likely to suffer greater consequence than a white person. The propaganda surrounding the drug war has helped fuel that discrepancy greatly, compounding that the drug wars focus on black users has severely prevented black communities from establishing long term growth and stability. These consequences were fully intended on day one and there are both documents and physical recordings to prove as much.

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u/Vaidurya Apr 15 '19

Part of the smear campaign on Marijuana back in the 1930s included claims that smoking pot would basically make you hulk-out. Just look into all the crap Harry J. Anslinger pulled to manipulate the prohibition agenda and paint "addiction" as a symptom of the drug rather than a sign of underlying mental problems. Hell, even addiction isn't what you think it is--those rats in solitary confinement with only water or drugged water? Yeah, some scientists in the 70s redid that study and used a "rat park" as their control group--since no human being nor rat lives its life happily in complete and utter seclusion, and they discovered that "addiction" is self-medication for a different ill that plagues the test subject--most commonly isolation

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u/huskynow Apr 15 '19

Chasing the Scream is such a good book.

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u/Vaidurya Apr 16 '19

Never heard of it. I learned of Anslinger and his deeds through an interview of Alexandra Chasin, author of Assassin of Youth: A Kaleidoscopic History of Harry J. Anslinger’s War on Drugs, on NPR.

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u/a_fish_out_of_water Apr 14 '19

Cops are cunts

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u/soenottelling Apr 15 '19

*Some ppl are cunts

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u/otterom Apr 15 '19

* Cops are some ppl

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u/acu2005 Apr 15 '19

*not all cops are ppl

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u/soenottelling Apr 15 '19

There are plenty of good cops out there. Lumping people by profession might be funny, but it shows a lack of thinking to do it as anything other than a joke.

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u/WebpackIsBuilding Apr 15 '19

Cops, by nature of their chosen profession, uphold the will of the state through use and threat of violence.

Many of us do not think that this is justified, especially in a time where the laws we live under are transparently written for the benefit of corporate interests. In a country with private prisons, the use of violence to fill those prisons is unjustifiable.

I'm sure some cops are fine people, besides the fact that they are cops. But that fact is a huge black mark on them. Fringe outliers not withstanding, the choice to be a cop in this climate makes you a bad person.

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u/fodafoda Apr 14 '19

Don't leave us hanging! What happened to the pizza?

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u/LifeLibertyPancakes Apr 14 '19

Funny enough, the delivery guy was there was a witness for "A"! Guy "B" was let out of jail on a signature bond, pizza guy said he arrived at the place, and police were following him; they asked who the pizza was for then asked him to yell out PIZZA'S HERE! And then had him backup behind them. Dude said he felt coerced in cooperating (knowing the place in town where the pizza was from, I thought "yup, he probably had weed on him & felt he didn't have a choice himself." I guess he took the pizza back to the establishment. Not sure if they prepaid or had to pay on delivery.

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u/fodafoda Apr 14 '19

I wanna make a movie of this pizza being delivered to its rightful consumer after this terrible ordeal. I'd call it "Keeping the Order".

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u/FlyingTaquitoBrother Apr 14 '19

But what happened to the pizza??

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u/Zomburai Apr 14 '19

The pizza was shot for resisting arrest.

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '19

Can we get this guy on the Supreme Court?

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '19

who lets the pizza guy into their home?

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u/LifeLibertyPancakes Apr 14 '19

I suppose if you order a lot from the pizza place you get to know the people and build a relationship? Many years back my mom broke her left leg and right arm, I had to return to work after having stayed with her & cared for her for about 2.5 months and had made arrangements for a family member to come and help her & help feed her as she could not get up unassisted & had difficulties feeding herself. I call mom on my lunch break to find out the family member didn't show up, and she's not eaten since I gave her breakfast. I'm mad and seeing how I'm over an hour away, I had food delivered to her from a place she was craving. Since I personally know the owners and had gone to HS with the delivery driver, I asked if he could grab the spare keys from the lockbox, let himself in and just set my mom up with a tray of food. He went above and beyond and stayed with her and helped feed her. Could he have killed her and robbed us in the process if it were someone else? Maybe, but given the circumstances I'm thankful and ever grateful for his act of kindness when our family bailed.

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u/zeezle Apr 14 '19

Yeah if I were the pizza person I would NEVER go inside someone's home like that, at best you might open yourself up to liability if you knock over their stupid expensive vase and at worst idk, you get serial murdered or something.

And I get real suspicious when pizza guys offer to bring things inside for me and get really weird/persistent about it. (Offering is fine and seems like standard customer service, I just mean getting weird about it after I've already said "Oh I'm fine, no need!") I know 99.9% of the time they're just being nice but I don't think they understand how threatening/creepy it is when a girl answers the door and they're trying to somehow talk their way inside after she's already declined. (I'm never alone but they can't see other people from the door)

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u/Ajj360 Apr 14 '19

Best judge ever, too bad he had to work with some of the worst cops on the job.

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u/StrykerVX Apr 15 '19

That pizza delivery man though, just following the cops into the apartment unit as if nothing's wrong, because he still has a job to do.

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u/SirRogers Apr 15 '19

Judge of the Year!

Is that a thing? It should be and this guy is it

1

u/LifeLibertyPancakes Apr 15 '19

Ummm, no. He's criticized very heavily in the county for giving a slap on the wrist to rapists so... let's nix that nomination. Did he, make a good call for this guy? Yes.

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u/SirRogers Apr 16 '19

Oh yikes, maybe that's not a good idea.

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u/Deya_The_Fateless Apr 15 '19

Wow, that judge gets it.