Car search

This entry was written back in August when Ted was still in the Pinellas County Jail.

One night as I was driving to work, I was pulled over for having a headlight out.

Anyway, the cop ran my license and everything checked out okay. When he gave me back my license, he asked me if I had anything illegal in the car. I told him no – even though I did.

He asked me if he could search my car and again I told him no.

Then he told me to step out of the car because he was going to search my car anyway. Those were his exact words.

Even though he had no right to search my car, I was still wrong ‘cause I shouldn’t have had weed in my car.

Naturally, I was arrested and taken to jail.

Just my luck

When I was 15 years old, I was waiting outside a gas station for a friend to pick me up. The neighborhood that I was in was a known drug area and I was the only white person around.

On this particular night, I had nothing illegal on me and I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

While I was waiting, I saw a man come out of the gas station with a brand new pack of cigarettes. I walked up to the man and asked him for a cigarette. He reached into his pocket and pulled a pack out with two cigarettes left in it and gave them to me. (The guy looked like he smoked crack.)

I went back to the curb I was sitting on and smoked a cigarette. Right about the time I finished it, a cop pulled up to me and asked how I was doing, and I told him I was fine. He asked me what I was doing standing there and I told him I was waiting to be picked up by a friend. Then he asked me if I had anything illegal on me, and I told him that the only things in my pockets were a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

He asked to search me and because I didn’t have anything on me, I said sure. He patted me down and pulled out the pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and reached in it and pulled out of it a small bag of cocaine.

He asked me about it and I told him that the man standing on the other side of the street gave me the pack and he must have left it in there. So the cop went and asked the man if he gave me the cigarettes and the man admitted to the cop that he did give them to me not even 5 – 10 minutes ago. Even with the man saying he gave me the pack, I still went to jail. That other guy got to go home and probably smoke crack.

Even though I’m pretty sure the cocaine belonged to the guy that gave me the cigarettes, I can’t help but wonder if the cop planted it on me.

Running from cops

I can’t count how many times I’ve run from the cops.

I’ve been in two chases in a car (both times I got away) and too many chases to count on foot.

A lot of times when I run from the cops, they always try to sneak up on me while I’m at my house. I always can tell if they’re about to try something when there’s a police cruiser parked on each end of my block.

Whenever I think they’re coming for me, I take off from my backyard and run across the street to the school that’s right next to my house. When I get there, I jump on the shed and from there I jump on the roof. Once I’m on the roof, the only way to keep up with me is in a helicopter and even though I haven’t tried, I’d be willing to bet I could still get away.

After awhile, the cops caught on to me and started parking at the school too. One time they did that, they caught me off guard, so I had to run through a church with nothing but open space around instead. It was just my luck that the cop that was parked at the school probably ran track professionally – he tackled me in seconds.

Illustration by Jeff Harter and used with permission from http://jeffharter.blogspot.com/.