Yeah, I was arrested several years back because I was drunkenly running home from a bar. Apparently a cop was chasing after me yelling at me to stop and my drunkass didn't hear him. I was tackled in the parking lot to my apartment and then thrown in the drunk tank. I got a first-hand experience of the U.S. judicial system when I spent the next 6 months fighting an "evading arrest" charge.
I eventually settled for Failure to Comply and Jaywalking, so two class C misdemeanor's instead of a class A, which could have really messed with background checks. Ideally I would have fought it till everything was dropped but I had just graduated college and was making next to nothing at my first job and couldn't afford to keep paying for a lawyer or to keep taking off time for court dates where they would make me sit and wait for anywhere from 3-6 hours before telling me they weren't ready and then reschedule. It's all taken care of now and in the past but it was definitely eye-opening into how the court system can massively fuck over lower-income or even middle-income people.
Sounds like a pretty shitty situation, glad to hear that it (kind of) worked out for you, although you're echoing the same problem that gets talked about all the time. Pretty frustrating stuff
The crazy thing is, if you had been busting your ass on a bike, no one would have batted an eye. Somehow it's socially unacceptable to use our feet for anything other than walking in public, but add some pedals and wheels into the equation and now you're just using the vehicle like it's meant to be used. You almost never see anyone biking at a jogging pace, or just running for no reason.
And the thing is, biking home from a bar is probably more dangerous than running.
Which I have never understood. What are you going to do on a bike, other than fall over or slowly veer into a bush? When I'm that drunk I cant even walk fast and stay balanced.
Saw a drunk cyclist once. He got on his bike, wobbled for a few meters, crashed into a low brick wall and fell into some rose bushes. Was pretty funny.
The US doesn't even allow people to run in public places? That's...weird..I often run when I'm late to class, or when I simply want to get somewhere quick.
Oh man, I know someone who had a very similar thing happen to him when he was completely sober but I think he was just detained/hassled and not arrested. I'm a paralegal currently working in HR, you would be surprised at how many people I have to do background checks on that have stories like this.
Yeah, the problem was that the DA kept dragging the case out. They would schedule a court date, I would take off work to go in, then I would wait several hours for them to just tell me that their case wasn't ready, then they would reschedule for a month or so later. I had about 5-6 different court dates and after that I couldn't afford to keep paying the lawyer or take off work anymore. So when they finally offered me a settlement of Failure to Comply and Jaywalking six months later I took it. It was bullshit, and I'm still kinda pissed that I settled, there was just no way I could afford to continue on with the way they were dragging it out.
Oh yeah, it was several years ago and all in the past. It was just one of the many hiccups I've had throughout my life that make the good parts, like now, so much better.
"Evading arrest" on what fucking grounds? Fucking piggie had no goddamn reason to arrest you in the first place so how could you evade it?
"Oh, we're gonna charge you with murder. What's that? You didn't kill anybody and there's no victim? Too bad, buddy."
Goddamn, I would have been hulked out with rage if I were you.
Public intoxication, I was drunk and outside so they had a "reason" to stop me. The evading arrest was because I didn't stop when they were chasing me, granted, it wouldn't have held up if I had ever actually gone up in front of a judge, but like I said in another reply, they just kept dragging the case out so that I wound up settling because I couldn't afford to keep paying the lawyer or keep taking days off of work. And as for hulking out with rage, if you do that on a cop you're winding up in a lot worse place than the drunk tank.
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u/handsomesteve88 Jul 13 '15
Yeah, I was arrested several years back because I was drunkenly running home from a bar. Apparently a cop was chasing after me yelling at me to stop and my drunkass didn't hear him. I was tackled in the parking lot to my apartment and then thrown in the drunk tank. I got a first-hand experience of the U.S. judicial system when I spent the next 6 months fighting an "evading arrest" charge.