Raritan 911: Robocop

Me: What is this?
DWI: It's exactly what you think it is.
Back in high school, one of my good friends decided to steal some chemicals from chemistry class. I don't remember what it was, but it was relatively harmless, but made cool colors when burned. Before burning, it was a white, powdery substance. He pours some of the chemical in a plastic bag and throws it in his glove compartment after school and forgets about it.

A few weeks later, he gets pulled over for speeding. Goes to the glove box to get his registration and insurance and reveals a bag full of what appears to be cocaine. My friend almost shit his pants, but was able to convince the cop that he wasn't trafficking quart sized bags of cocaine.
 
Glad it didn't jump units - my friend in concord ridge reported that nobody was hurt.
kudo to the FD!

Yes. Thankfully it wasn't the middle of the night. We were able to evacuate the street while the FD knocked down the fire. Could have ended very differently.
 
Tonight, I grabbed one of the Millennial officers who hasn't gotten his own, proactive arrest yet and doubled up with him. After a year or so, I find it's good to jump back in the car with a young officer and give them another round of training. During "official" FTO (field training officer) time when an officer first starts, he or she gets smashed with information about roads, boundaries, radio usage, responding to all sorts of calls, tactical positioning on car stops, using the mobile data terminals, report writing, and how I take my coffee. You know, first-level knowledge.

After a year, an officer pretty much has the basics down. Only then can an officer start concentrating on second-level stuff: drunk driving enforcement, drug interdiction, use of a K-9, interview techniques, car searches, and what time I want my coffee delivered to me. Most officers start to figure this stuff out for themselves, but some need a little more guidance.

So I double up with Officer M and tell him, "Let's go find some shit tonight." It's January, it's foggy, and it's a Monday night, so by all measures we have our work cut out for us.

After a few swings-and-misses, we stop a young gay male from out of the area for an equipment violation. I mean, clearly gay. With Lambertville and New Hope just down the road, it's quite common. As he pulls his license from his wallet, I spot a cut straw with some residue in it in there as well. I pull him out of the car, Mirandize him, and, after a quick interview, the driver admits he uses the straw to snort meth and did so earlier in the day.

A few quick tests determine that he's not under the influence while I am talking with him.

State law (case law, actually) allows a search of the interior compartment after a "plain view" of contraband. So, I tag in Officer M to conduct a thorough search while I babysit the driver. I take an educated (and hopeful) guess that the guy will have at least a few surprises for Officer M in the car somewhere.

Officer M starts going through the car. I immediately tell him to stop searching and "glove up". Officer M complies. He gets back to the search and quickly finds a meth pipe and a small bag of meth in the center console. I arrest the driver and secure him in the patrol car, out of earshot of us. Great. Keep going, I tell Officer M.

Officer M starts digging through a messenger bag as I begin to hold my breath.

Officer M pulls out a bottle with GUN OIL printed on it. Officer M is completely out in left field and asks me if he thinks there is a firearm in the car. Clearly, he didn't read the fine print on the bottle that said silicone lubricant. Or take into account the shape of the bottle. I have. I did.

GUN_OIL_SILICONE_8_OZ__62172_zoom.jpg

So Officer M keeps digging...

After a few more seconds, he pulls out this:

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I burst out with something like, "AWESOME!". Officer M looks at me, confused. I ask, what do you think that is? Officer M was still confused. I tell Officer M to read the fine print on the GUN OIL. Slowly, but surely, Officer M puts it all together. The driver's voice, his dress, his walk, the GUN OIL, the large, shiny metal ring. HOLY SHIT, Officer M exclaims. Is this a cockring?

Yes, I say. And it's a rather big one. Now aren't you glad I told you to wear gloves?

Another valuable lesson learned tonight. I will see if he wants to ride with me again tomorrow night, but I think he's had his fill.

I gotta wrap this up and put some pictures of cockrings in his locker.
 
Tonight's adventure. Car crash into a house. We arrived to find the driver was gone. As cops, we assumed he ran because he was drunk/high and started checking the area and the address of the registered owner. The fire department arrived and had a different assumption: that he exited the car and fell down the old well that he blasted through on the property. Our fire department is very well-trained and I was curious how they were going to check the 40-foot-deep well for him.

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These pictures are after the full-size SUV had been removed from the scene. I'm guessing the driver fell asleep after getting drunk or high and ran the stop sign at the intersection near by. The FD ended up stabilizing a 50-foot ladder from the ladder truck and then used a pike pole and IR camera to search the watery abyss. Nobody and no body was located, thankfully.
 
Wow what a situation. From a legal standpoint, what is worse - slamming into a house drunk, remaining at the scene and accepting the consequences, or running away and getting arrested the next day?
 
Wow what a situation. From a legal standpoint, what is worse - slamming into a house drunk, remaining at the scene and accepting the consequences, or running away and getting arrested the next day?
running away is much worse. same charges as staying, plus leaving scene of accident.
 
running away is much worse. same charges as staying, plus leaving scene of accident.
If you can get diagnosed with a concussion can you claim you wandered off to find help, got confused and walked home? "I only left the scene because I was temporarily mentally impaired due to the concussion". Someone call Jackie!
jackie-chiles-the-maestro-seinfeld-2.jpg
 
I know someone who never stopped driving through multiple alcohol related DUI's and some short jail time for the repeat offenses. On a recent outing he totaled his truck crashing into the woods not far from his house. Ran home, slept it off. When the cops showed up at his door, they knew what happened, but he claimed the car was in his driveway when he went to bed. Nothing ever came of it, I don't think he even had to recover the car. @Carson, would the outcome be any different if there was video footage or witnesses? This happened in the middle of no where so I'm guess there was neither.
 
I suspect it would be pretty easy to find the bar the guy was drinking at based on his address and location of the car. Then you just go to the bar with a picture of they guy and ask the bartenders if he was there drinking the night before. Not sure it would be worth the police officer's time though. So I suggest if you are gonna attempt that, you should not be a smug douche about it, and try not to give the cops a reason to go through the trouble.
 
Boy, everyone is putting their thinking caps on for this one. I like it. That being said, I'm not really interested in helping people beat a DWI, so I'll keep things vague.

To be convicted of a DWI in NJ, I have to prove 3 things: 1, that you operated or intended to operate a motor vehicle; 2, that you operated that motor vehicle while impaired; and 3, that the impairment was due to drugs or alcohol. If I can't prove all 3 beyond a reasonable doubt (and you spend the money on a decent attorney), you will probably beat the DWI charge. However, you may still be convicted of refusal to submit to breath testing (a minimum 7 month loss of license and similar fines to DWI), leaving the scene of an accident (1 year loss of license, lower fines, but 8 license points if you hurt someone in the accident), if those apply; or reckless driving (5 license points and up to 90 days loss of license). Good luck getting auto insurance for under 10 grand a year with a leaving the scene conviction.

In alcohol-related cases, yes, not finding him until the morning would more than likely result in him beating a DWI charge. Yes, a head injury would make our case much harder to prove. We can subpoena hospital records and the NJSP ADTU (Alcohol and Drug Testing Unit) can and does supply experts that can testify in difficult court cases. Experts in lab work, biology, chemistry, what have you. Interestingly, males and females, whether 100 pounds or 400 pounds, all metabolize alcohol in the liver at a very similar rate (0.015% per hour), so you can extrapolate the level of alcohol in their system at the time of the crash if needed. Yes, witnesses to the crash, at the bar, cameras, etc, all help but we would still have to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Sometimes it depends on the prosecutor and how much time he or she wants to spend on one case (and remember DWI in NJ is not a criminal offense).

In this particular case, we had reason to believe the registered owner was driving and that he was under the influence of drugs, not alcohol. So that changes things a little bit. There is no mathematical rate of destruction so it might make a DWI harder to prove, but I then also have the opportunity to charge you with being under the influence of a controlled dangerous substance which is a criminal charge and actually much easier to prove. Additionally, if I can so much get one grain of powder out of your nose hairs I'm charging you with possession of CDS and you are going to catch a felony. Make me work hard to do my job and you'll see me work really hard to shove it up your ass in court.

I learned from Facebook that our registered owner was a fan of strip clubs and was an electrician at a local business. So I sat in the driveway of his residence from about 4:30am until the end of my shift thinking he might creep back home before work. I think most of the Millennial officers were updating their Instagram accounts while I actually did some old-fashioned police work. God, this job has changed. But I digress.

Anyway, at about 5:30am his 70 year old mother, with whom he lives and who popped an Ambien before going to bed so she slept through our constant ringing the doorbell, walked outside. She wasn't overly suprised to hear what had happened. She told me her son was probably staying at his girlfriend's house in Flemington but she didn't know her last name or address. Her son was not answering his cell phone, so at that point I pretty much exhausted all leads.

The leaky bag of poop was handed over to dayshift to follow up on. We'll go from there. Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly.
 
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An aquaitance was charged with DWI aft when she pulled into her driveway, opened the door and fell asleep in the car. One of her neighbors called the cops and she was arrested / charged. Her lawyer somehow had the DWI charge dropped.
 
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