ryanreed.NET

I thought I would go and tell a true story about a run in with some police officers in Texas a couple weeks ago.

THE "STORY"

About a month ago, myself and 2 of my buddies, Randy McCaig and Brian Roy took a road trip from Providence, RI to Houston, TX to visit a good friend of ours, Matt Garza. We managed to make our way all the way to the Texas border without incident.

I was driving as we made it past the border. It was around 1 in the morning as we passed into Beaumont, TX. Soon after making it into the city border, 2 police vehicles flashed their lights and pulled us over on an overpass (about here).

I think it's important to preface the upcoming part of the story with a little bit of information. First, the GLI has a really nice feature where just tapping the turn signal makes it signal 3 times for lane changes. I use this feature A LOT due to it's convenience. I can't remember the last time I changed lanes without signaling. Second, I recall the speed limit being 70 MPH, 65 MPH at night. I had set the cruise control to about 68 earlier for fear of being pulled over so close to our destination.

One officer walked to the driver door and the other to the passenger. I was immediately asked to exit the vehicle and stand behind the car with both officers. I could tell quickly one of the officers was the senior and the other was a newbie here. The senior officer asked me if I knew how fast I was driving. I answered relatively honestly, "65, maybe 70." The senior officer immediately said "you were doing 80 past both of us and changing lanes without signaling." It was at this point I knew they had pulled me over for some other reason. I know I wasn't driving 80. I'm 99% certain I also wasn't changing lanes without signaling, although that would be near impossible to prove.

Of course I stammered a little about how I didn't think that was possible. I didn't mention the cruise control as I'm sure that's a pretty common "excuse." He took my driver's license and immediately looked up at me. "You have a Tennessee driver's license and a Rhode Island license plate?" I tried briefly to explain that I live in RI and the license is from when I was "living with my parents in TN." Unfortunately, it's hard to explain when you're nervous and starting to get cold in a pair of shorts and t-shirt on an overpass.

It would seem that the answer was not really satisfactory enough so he pulled Randy and Brian out of the car, separating them near the front of my car. The officer came back and asked if it would be alright to search my car. I told the officer that he could search everything except the trunk and glove compartment. You might wonder why I wouldn't let him search my trunk. What was I hiding? Nothing. The worst we had in the car was a 12 pack of Red Bull. I don't believe it's a good idea to forfeit rights and give them the free roam some may want.

The officer decided this was the perfect reason to call the K-9 unit to the scene. This is when I met Officer Valdez of the K-9 unit. When he showed up, the first officer went ahead with searching my vehicle. During the 30 minute process, Valdez made sure my "story" matched up with my compadres. After checking out our stories, he just stood near me and stared me down hard. This made me noticeably uncomfortable which Officer Valdez took as me being nervous about something in the car, which lead to the following mini conversation.

Officer Valdez: "Why are you so nervous?"
Me: "Sir, I'm not nervous, I'm just cold."
Officer Valdez: "How is that possible? You're from Rhode Island and you're in Texas. It's 75*"
Me: *sigh*

So, during the search, the first officer ended up pulling out my camera bag, which happened to be partially unzipped as we had been taking a lot of pictures along the way to TX. Due to the officer trying to fly through the search, he pulled the camera bag too quickly, causing my new Nikon D5000 to tumble from about 4ft up to the highway shoulder, causing the lens to fly off the camera. I'll be completely honest, I wasn't really angry at the time as I thought it was Randy's camera. Kind of selfish, I know, but what can I say?

After putting the camera back in the car, they proceeded to pop the hood and check every cranny of the engine bay. It's a pretty clean engine bay so the search only took about 5-10 minutes. Finally, he came back, pulling Valdez away for a conversation, and passed the vehicle search off to the K-9 unit. This is when I got to see the awesome looking dog. I will admit, K-9 unit's have awesome dogs. Valdez took the dog around my entire car looking for anything suspicious. The dog, unfortunately, stopped at the driver and passenger side doors which meant a more in depth look into the car.

The first officer grabbed what must have been an endoscope out of the trunk of his car. The officer proceeded to pull up the door jams on the the front of both sides of the car, looking inside with the endoscope. Finding nothing, he proceeded to unscrew part of the wheel wells and check the cavities with the endoscope. Unfortunately for him, no drugs or illegal anything were there.

You may recall earlier I had mentioned how I declined to allow the officers to search my trunk. Being as "creative" as police can be at times, the officers went to my buddies and asked them if they could search their bags. My buddies hadn't heard anything I had told the officers so they had pretty much said that they wanted to get this over with and that the police officers could search their bags.

The sneaky thing about this was their bags were in the trunk. This managed to basically get around my decline of the trunk search. Of course they couldn't go into the trunk, so they had Randy and Brian take their bags out. With the trunk open, if there had been anything illegal in plain sight, I would have been in some trouble. I don't really own anything illegal so I wasn't worried, but it's still the thought that counts.

Finally, after searching the bags and finding nothing, the officers went to their car and discussed the results (or lack there of). Finally, all 3 officers came over, handed back our IDs/Driver's Licenses, and told us we could go. The first officer did mention that "they were here for our protection." And then we/they were off, no ticket issued.

CONCLUSIONS

One thing not mentioned above was when Officer Valdez came on the scene, he had asked me what I did. I mentioned to him I wasn't sure. I asked Officer Valdez why I had been pulled over and he mentioned that they had been having trouble with drugs and "terrorist activities" on their highway. Either he really had no idea why he was there (I find this unlikely but it is possible) or he didn't know the "charges" because they hadn't pulled us over for speeding and changing lanes without signaling.

I have a strong belief that the reason we had been pulled over was due to the Rhode Island plates and they thought we could be running drugs. To be honest, I wouldn't have been angry if they had just said they suspected we might be running drugs. What made me angry about the entire thing was that they had made up something to pull us over. I understand trying to stop drugs from passing along their borders but it's kind of ridiculous to actually start making up violations to search a vehicle.

I just wanted to share this experience. It was interesting to say the least.

A QUICK NOTE

I did send an email to one of the captains at the Beoumont Police Department. I did receive a phone call from the captain (which I saved to my computer) in which he said the officer who dropped my camera did admit to it and that I could call another person to try to get the cost of the camera recouped (due to lens damage and possible damage to the camera itself). I am still in the process of getting this all worked out. I did submit a report about the incident and a request to get it resolved. We'll see how it goes.

Please also don't take this "story" as thinking I hate the cops. I have a lot of respect for law enforcement. I know there are a lot of videos and articles regarding police over extending their authority and abusing their power but I do believe those types of police are probably in the minority. This was just a recount of an experience I had with a few police.

I am also not suggesting the officers are bad or anything but I would not say this was a pleasant experience. It happens.