[poll] Have you ever been in trouble with the law?

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I was unlucky enough to go through high school post-Columbine and still survived. Today any little threat is seen as a potential deadly weapon!

I picked the fourth one even though I'm not technically an "aspie" (seriously that's not a generic word for every kind of autistic person who posts here). And even though I'd rather have put between the fourth and the fifth, because what happened was I'd either get hauled to the police station and then released without charges, or I would get hauled to the local emergency room and involuntarily committed to a mental institution (so, detained by the law and imprisoned but not for criminal charges). Although a few times I was doing something obvious like having a public meltdown or trespassing and acting weird (don't ask, it's a long story), mostly I was just walking down the street, or sitting somewhere. I haven't been able to consistently and safely leave the house alone since I was 13 or 14 (can't remember which age the trouble started). It's something about my appearance, makes people believe I shouldn't be out in public. People call the cops to report a "wanderer". Cops show up, sometimes grabbing me from behind so that I fight them and then they can handcuff me and throw me in the car and accuse me of being a "danger to others" (er, not really a danger, and only to people who grab me from behind, which I'd expect most people not to react well to). They treat me like an object -- grab whatever part of me they want to look at (like grab my arms to look for track marks without even asking me to raise my sleeve, grab my jewelry to inspect it, one time grabbed a twig out of my hand and snapped it and threw it on the ground, etc.) and move me around wherever they want me, even when they aren't grabbing me from behind. Other times it goes better. But in all cases just a mess, and so I don't go out alone very often anymore, even though my powerchair tends to disguise my weird-looking-ness as mainly physical, so I get less of that now.

I had just started high school when Columbine happened. The paranoia was horrendous. I had people coming up to me because I was the loner and asking me if I would shoot up the place.

Probably didn't help much that I had a trench coat at the time. :-\

I lived in a southern town where hillbillies held majority and felt they had rule over the town and minority. The town was growing and getting changes to everything (modernizing) and these backwoods individuals didn't like it. They started vandalizing construction sites and tearing down the new street signs. In particular, there was a sign that could not stand for more than a day before it would disappear in the night - and the authorities were taking notice. Cops would stake out the location, but the sign would still disappear when they weren't looking...

One Saturday night, I was picking up a friend from this town. When I pulled up to his location, he jumps in my car with something stuffed under his jacket and tells me to floor it. I panic at his insistence and do as he says. As soon as we get up to speed he pulls out the infamous sign that the town has been talking about. I knew what it was and told him to get rid of it - he declined with an uncharacteristically evil laugh.

Five minutes down the road, I see blue lights behind me. I pull over and the guy that was with me jumps out and runs through the forest (leaving the sign). The lone cop ignores him and gets me out of the car with his gun drawn. Violently putting cuffs on me, the cop crushes his knee into my back and says, "Got you now"! I laid there, fighting anxiety, and knew there was going to be no remorse shown... or so I thought.

When backup arrived, I was questioned and somehow favored. I don't know what the cop saw in me, but he decided against taking me to jail; although, I still received a ticket for destruction of gov't property. When my court date came, I had to get up in front of a courtroom full of people and an extremely irritated judge. He looked at me and said, "Vandalizing my property, what the hell is wrong with you"? Anxiety came over me and I was speechless. For not explaining myself properly, I got the full penalty for a first offense. I sure learned my lesson

It was really sh*tty of your friend to do that to you.

I was really close to getting in trouble.. I think it helps if you are a tearful little girl instead of.. ahem.. a dude in a trench coat.

When I was in my late teens, I sometimes had problems understanding the consequences of my actions (or inaction in this case). I had accumulated quite a few parking tickets that eventually turned into a traffic warrant, but just didn't have the money to pay it.

My girlfriend at the time had somehow upset one of her best friends. Her best friend knew that I had a traffic warrant because my girlfriend during that time couldn't keep my business to herself. So after getting out of the shower one morning, a police officer showed up at our front door and asked me to come with him, slapping cuffs on me, driving me down to the police department and throwing me in the slammer.

The smells and lights in that jail were overpowering, and I still remember how I was fighting off a migraine from it all. Fortunately my grandmother lived relatively close and got me out of there after an hour or so, but I was just in shambles for a few days after that.

Yes. Many times as a juvenile. Things like breaking and entering, burglary, larceny, criminal tresspassing, grand theft auto. Once I turned 18, I cleaned my act up becuase I wanted a clean record as an adult.

Have not been persecuted before but have done things that would constitute an offense. Example of assault of school students who I have fought,
offensive language and being a public nuisance.

Sort of. It was a Friday an homecoming weekend and I decided to shop looking for Benny & Joon see if any second hand stores had it. Then as I am leaving a supermarket, I see a police car and the officer waves his hand at me and points back. I backed up and the car pulls into the parking lot and the officer gets out and says I am on the wrong side of the street. I said I was in the parking lot. He said it was a street.
It looked like a parking lot because it was between the store and the gas station and there were no curbs so it looked like a parking lot. He also asked me to get out so I do and they tell me I am under arrest for shoplifting a video tape. They slap hand cuffs on me and I thought it was some joke and the police were going to take them off me and laugh and say I should have seen the look on my face and that someone in my school had set it all up as a joke. But they never took them off and I realized it was all real. They put me in the car and asked for my phone number and called my parents to tell them I had been arrested and to come and pick me up at the police station.

I was very scared and I was expecting to be in a cell when I get there and I saw kids and a few kids from my school and it was so humiliating. They even had the car towed I was driving.

Once we got there, they took me into the station and took off my hand cuffs and I had a seat. But they never brought me to a cell. We wait for my parents to come and they arrive and weren't mad at me. I was worried what if I really did take a video tape and didn't know it. My mom said if that happened, then we talk to my shrink about it. My parents were mad about the whole thing and how it was handled so my dad gave them permission to search the car and they had to pay to get it out of the yard. There was no video tape and for the whole weekend I hid in the basement and didn't want to go to school ever again thinking my reputation be ruined and everyone would think I was a thief.

But instead I go to school and instead of being infamous, I had a fame. Kids wanted to know what happened and they were all going how stupid the officers were and it does look like a parking lot and how stupid the store owner was. I also got teased about being pulled over and I kept saying I wasn't pulled over, I was already in the parking lot waiting to go on the road. They just stopped me is all. Then mom explained to me being pulled over just means you got stopped by an officer and it doesn't matter if you weren't on the road.

I was never sure why this man in a second and store thought I took something without paying for it and why didn't hey go after me? Instead he called the police and I didn't take a step in that tore for about eight months. Luckily I didn't get a criminal record and no one would show my mother the tape where I was caught on so she will never know what I did that made me look suspicious.

And these were volunteer officers, not trained ones.

So I didn't really get in trouble with the law because there was no criminal record put on me and no sentencing.

I've never been in trouble with the law, luckily.

I was born in '85 and this stuff didn't happen in my schools. By high school these things were happening all over. I got in fights with other kids in my school and when I first moved to Montana and there were no charges. In 6th grade, my school just wanted to put me in a another school that had a class for kids with behavior disorders. In 7th grade, I got suspended one time. Then suspended again for saying I wish I could slap the art teacher. I was suspended once in 6th grade for holding a knife out to a teacher. Today, I may have gotten arrested or charged of being threatening and charged for assaults. But back then it was the late 90's so things were still different and then it all started to change after the Colombine shooting. But I have heard in 6th grade about a kindergartner being kicked out of school for talking about a gun and another student being suspended for saying he wants to kill people. In 7th grade, one of my dad's friends two sons got expelled from school for the rest of the school year and the follower year for threatening to bring a gun to school. So things were already changing before the Columbine incident.

But my high school never had security or that security crap some high schools have all students go through when they first arrive. It's like arriving to the airport before you get on the plane or when you enter a government building. I lived in a small town was why so there weren't that many students and we didn't get those incidents except twice, the cops were called being told there was a bomb in our school so everyone had to evacuate the middle school and the high school and locks had to be broken to check lockers and everything was ripped apart looking for the bomb and you know what, false alarm. These kids would do it as a joke and they did get in trouble for it with the law. Then three other kids did it again that year and this time one of them was an 11 year old girl in 6th grade along with two other teens. The first time the bomb fright was scary and the second time I figured false alarm so I didn't freak out. No one was upset this time and no one was sent home early like the last time.

My first ex always wore a trench coat and people always judged him for it and be scared of him. But he complain about it and I would tell him to stop wearing it then and he said it was who he is and it be "ret*d" to stop just because of people. I told him don't wear it out in public then and only at home and at his friends or his cousin's. He still didn't like that idea so I told him to stop complaining then if he isn't going to solve his issue. He complained about pretty much everything.

Whenever I was bullied and did nothing, the bullies never got into trouble.

Whenever I fought back, I always got in trouble. Got sent to the principals office several times for fighting back.

Wow, same here. That's so discouraging when that happens.

Same here also.

But when I was younger, we both got in trouble but as I got older, it only be me. My school was better was why and then it got crappier and crappier as the years went by. Plus I heard the good staff left because they got sick of the politics.