Chapter
Sixteen
Police
– My First Arrest
When
I was thirteen years old I was sneaking out of the house at night all
the time. I had a paper delivery route for a few years and I was at
that time where I wanted to give it up and pass it on to somebody
else. Around this time my parents weren’t letting me hang out with
my friend Travis. They thought he was a bad influence on me, but on
the last night of my paper route I managed to talk my parents into
thinking he wasn’t getting into any trouble anymore and they let
him stay the night at my house that night.
That night we both went
out and stole quite a few hood ornaments off of cars around our town.
We didn’t get much sleep that night and had to fold and deliver
papers by 5:30AM. I was passing the paper route onto my best friend
who lived two houses away from me. He and I grew up together for the
last eight years or so. He was a good kid and hadn’t been in any
trouble so it was unfortunate that I involved him in what happened
next. All three of us went off on the route to teach my best friend
the layout of the route. We walked it for the purpose of learning
it, but on a normal day I’d fly through and deliver the whole route
on my bicycle in less than an hour. Walking it would take up to two
hours. When we started walking the route we came across some cars
with ornaments still attached to the hood. Some we pulled off, some
we skipped by. But when we were nearly finished with the route I was
showing my other friend where the deliveries went in the trailer park
and I heard a “SNAP!” behind me. The next thing I knew was one
of the people that lived there came outside yelling at us like crazy.
Apparently he had seen Travis steal the ornament. So we took off
running and we couldn’t think of anywhere to hide the ornaments, so
I stuck them into my newspaper bag. A few blocks up the street a
police officer pulled up next to us and asked us what we were doing.
I told him that I was showing my friend how to deliver the papers on
the route because he was taking it over. The officer asked us if we
had anything on us we shouldn’t have and of course I said no. He
looked through our pockets and when searching in my jacket he found
an ornament I still had in my pocket from the night before. After
that he told me I was under arrest and handcuffed me. I told him
there was more in the bag and he took those too. All three of us
were taken to the police department but I told the officer that the
others didn’t have anything to do with it, that I had stolen them
on my own. They took statements and my two friends were picked up by
their parents. My parents were called down there as well and they
said they were going to investigate it a little further.
A few days
later I was at a track meet that I was participating in when four
officers crossed the field and handcuffed me for the second time that
week, only this time it was in front of five different schools and
hundreds of parents. They took me to the police department again.
This time they asked me if I had anything else I had stolen in my
home and I told them I didn’t. They asked me if I had put anything
in my attic that I had stolen and I again told them I didn’t. Then
they pulled out a box of hood ornaments that I had stolen over the
past month. It contained forty-six hood ornaments of all makes and
models. I rode in a police car later that day and pointed out each
house I could remember stealing an ornament off of a car at. There
were too many to remember, and the rest were from cars in a municipal
parking lot.
I was charged with multiple theft charges and was able
to obtain a list of the confirmed victims of the thefts. I wrote
letters of apology to all of the people on the list and all but two
didn’t reply. The ones that didn’t reply ended up dropping the
charges and the two that did reply accepted my apology and said I
could do yard work for them as repayment for what I had done. I was
still put on probation for something but don’t remember the details
of the reasoning. Apparently they found cause to put me on
probation, and I definitely needed it.
Only, when I was put on
supervision they found I had been smoking marijuana, so they started
drug testing me. I found out I could drink alcohol and it wouldn’t
come up in the drug tests, so that was the beginning of my first
stages of heavy drinking. I would drink almost every night for a
while, just so I could sleep at night. It wasn’t long after that
and I had a panic attack and finally broke down and told my mom
everything. She had me see a psychiatrist who eventually started me
on some medications that helped very little. But at least they got
me started on something and recognized something was wrong with the
way I was thinking and acting.
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