I've had that one "big arrest" where you're like 'this is it, I have to change, otherwise I'm going to be institutionalized forever' ...
It happened when I was 17 and got arrested in school holding a baggie with cocaine residue (I finished the coke a couple hours before being arrested), a straw, a razor, weird herbal sleeping pills, a half empty bottle of Bacardi 151, 3 syringes (unused) and a roach of marijuana. My high school assistant principal made a copy of all the stuff I had ("evidence") and called the cops. I was taken out of school in handcuffs and driven to the police station. They kept me handcuffed to a pole for nearly 8 hours. I asked to use the bathroom somewhere around 5,000 times but no one would escort me so I had to hold my urine until my mom came. I had never felt so inhuman before. The police officers gave me my shoes laces back, my mom bought me a sandwich and finally, I got to pee at some random fast food joint. I was not proud of having done that and having to call my mom to come get me from the police station. Nor was I happy being interrogated about who my drug dealer was, etc, because I wasn't about to snitch and get myself or my family killed! When all was said and done, I got one year of probation for being a juvenile offender and it is now expunged from my record. During that year, I did nothing other than drink alcohol. (As in, I kept my nose clean from cocaine.) I may have also smoked weed but I definitely laid low, as violating my probation would have been tantamount to reopening my case. BUT! The good thing about this arrest: I was going to start shooting cocaine the next day had I not been arrested. Because I was arrested, I never got the chance to use a needle and never had the urge to do so again, although I still snort drugs. But in the grand scheme of things, I have never been so happy to have been arrested. I don't know if I would be typing this now if I didn't get arrested that day. So you can say "fuck the police" all you want, but sometimes they're doing a good job.
Prior to that big arrest, I was "detained"/"cuffed & stuffed" twice before, once for truancy & being in the company of someone who was shoplifting (which wasn't a real crime, just a reason for them to take me to the station in handcuffs and call my parents) and the other time for "theft of services".
This happened because I stayed out all night drinking & smoking & eating Xanax with some friends. Xanax, alcohol and cocaine in large amounts got me into tons of trouble. This specific night, I was carrying over $1000 dollars in cash on me because I was going to buy a computer earlier in the day (true story! the cops thought I was a drug dealer or something because I had so much cash on me but this was before everyone and their dog had a debit card! but i didn't find any computers I wanted to buy that day & kept the money, I told the cops my story and I was such a nerd I think they believed it)...
So my friends & I decided to take a cab home... I guess I decided I was paying for the cab but at the last minute everyone was like "we should run out of the cab and into someone's apartment so we don't have to pay, the cab driver will just drive away, who cares" but meanwhile I didn't know my dad had called the cops on me for staying out so late and when we got out of the cab there was a cop car behind us that no one even noticed until the cops knocked on my friends door (how did they know her apartment??) and made us come into the hallway (I left my bag full of alcohol and Xanax inside the apartment, thank god!, otherwise I would have seen the inside of another police station) so they cuffed me and my girl friend & searched us but found nothing (the guys we were with had records and took off into thin air).
The cops took my friend down to a police car in cuffs, probably to scare her and took me down into another police cruiser in handcuffs, just to scare me as well but I didn't know it at the time! I saw the cops take my friend out of the car and release her to her Grandma and I started cursing the cops out, "Why does she get to go free?!?!" Blah blah blah... so I was, thinking back, in the middle of a Xanax + alcohol blackout, and the cops decided to drive me home. Coming home to my parents with my hands cuffed behind my back like a criminal (well, I guess I was a criminal at the time) at 3am is one of the most embarrassing things that can happen to a teenager... It made me want to slow my life down and get it back on track.
After these arrests, I ended up back in High School, got my diploma at 19, started college and then my mom died at 20 so I backslid quite a bit these past 3 years. But this can show you that being arrested can actually be a new beginning and a new chance instead of a 'death sentence'. A wake up call, if you will. The NYPD is supposed to be the worst police/paramilitary force in the United States but when they dealt with me (albeit a mouthy, usually drunk & Xanax'd/coked out white female teenager) they were decent people. Or else they didn't want to do paper work those times I was arrested and I am extremely lucky to not have a record. But whatever it is, I am still here, still clean (on paper) and trying to stop my whirlwind life for the sake of myself... I got on this ride, I bought the ticket but I think I need to get off now...
