Girl buys water, spends night in jail

[Nightfyre]

I found this story interesting/entertaining.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow...181104442.html

Felony charges were dropped on Thursday against a 20-year-old University of Virginia student who says she panicked when undercover agents from the state's Alcohol Beverage Control division mistook her water purchase for beer.

According to Charlottesville (Va.) Daily Progress, the student, Elizabeth Daly, was walking to her car on April 11 at approximately 10:15 p.m. with a box of sparkling water, cookie dough and ice cream she had just bought from a local supermarket when the agents—six men and one woman, all in plainclothes—approached suspecting the box, a blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water, to be a 12-pack of beer. One jumped on the hood of her SUV; another pulled out a gun, Daly said, as her roommates seated inside looked on in horror.

"They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform," Daly wrote in an account submitted to the court. "I couldn't put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were ... terrified."

Daly's roommate in the front passenger seat told her to "go, go, go"—and that's what she did, apparently "grazing" two of the agents in the process.

The students called 911 as they left the parking lot, police said, and were pulled over by another agent driving a vehicle with lights and sirens, Charlottesville Commonwealth Attorney Dave Chapman told the paper.

Daly apologized when she realized who they were, Chapman said, but agents arrested Daly and charged her with two counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer and one count of eluding police—each carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison and $2,500 in fines. She spent the night in Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

"This has been an extremely trying experience," Daly wrote. "It is something to this day I cannot understand or believe has come to this point."

Either can Chapman.

"It wouldn't be the right thing to do to prosecute this," he said.

Nonetheless, Chapman "stood by the agents' decision to file charges, citing faith in a process that yielded an appropriate resolution."

"You don't know all the facts until you complete the investigation," he said.

Is it common practice to draw a weapon on an underage person suspected of purchasing alcohol?

[underEJ]

Originally Posted by crazycoffey

No but she has been living in a disability check since the age of 25.

Am I missing an inside joke?

[crazycoffey]

Originally Posted by underEJ

Am I missing an inside joke?

Yeah, that you're a nutjob.

[Garcia Bronco]

Originally Posted by underEJ

I did press charges, but he died very soon after that so it never went past the initial investigation. I saw his funeral on tv with the heroic montage of images and wanted to scream to everyone what he really was (my complaint was the third on his record, problem with the system for sure,) but then I saw his wife and kids and dropped the complaint because the department meant to take his death benefit from her. I don't know if the other two complaints were dropped or if he essentially screwed his own family over too.

I look at it as a huge learning experience and I frequently help people know how to handle LEO interactions as legally as possible without giving up our rights. I made mistakes in that encounter. The extreme nature of the ordeal is definitely unusual in my case, but the basic transaction is pretty similar to what other people not accustomed to being suspected of something will face. And quite frankly, I totally failed from the first moment, and they count on that. When he first got out of his car and said "give me your bag," I should have replied that "I do not consent to any search of my person or belongings." Then if he took it anyway and searched it, he would have violated my civil rights. Depending on the circumstance, I would have at least had to bear a cursory resemblance to the description of the suspect being sought to qualify for reasonable suspicion, but courts have ruled that not expressly stating your refusal of consent is equivalent to consent so I effectively consented.

I made other mistakes too, answering things I needn't have, questions designed to get me to give up other rights without knowing it, but I'd already screwed up from the first moment. If I had not made the first mistake, we'd maybe never gotten away from the sidewalk to the hood of the car where it all went bad. We just live in a world now where it isn't enough to be innocent. You have to be innocent and savvy at the same time. Now I am.

May father was a police officer and he even told me to NEVER volunteer information to the police. Either way it sounds like there was no reason for the officer to get violent. And that's exactly what it was.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by underEJ

Ha! In fact, yes I was. Who knew that was such a trigger.

Police hate water!

[crazycoffey]

Originally Posted by Garcia Bronco

May father was a police officer and he even told me to NEVER volunteer information to the police. Either way it sounds like there was no reason for the officer to get violent. And that's exactly what it was.

Lets just not pretend that the few assholes represent the many, nor that a mistake by a bad cop means we should suggest not cooperating as a better example as a citizen. Yes, know your rights, but also know the law.

[underEJ]

Originally Posted by crazycoffey

Yeah, that you're a nutjob.

So the sane people are willing to go through that? Then sure, I'm a nutjob, but I earn my own living thanks!

And as an aside, there are way too many references to disability checks and welfare and living off the taxpayer around here to have immediately understood you meant I was legitimately on disability for mental issues prior to my assault by an officer. Maybe a bit more clarity next time?

[crazycoffey]

Originally Posted by underEJ

So the sane people are willing to go through that? Then sure, I'm a nutjob, but I earn my own living thanks!

And as an aside, there are way too many references to disability checks and welfare and living off the taxpayer around here to have immediately understood you meant I was legitimately on disability for mental issues prior to my assault by an officer. Maybe a bit more clarity next time?

It was an inside joke, nancy. And you're in the right BB to be a nutjob, nutjob. Your aluminum foil hat must have slid off for a moment.

[Dartgod]

Originally Posted by underEJ

When he first got out of his car and said "give me your bag,"

Wait. I thought the cop lept out of his car and grabbed your bag?

Originally Posted by underEJ

I had a cop speed up to me, a pedestrian on a side street, screech to a halt pointed at the corner where I stood, leap out of his car, grab my bag, dump it all over the hood of his car...

[underEJ]

Originally Posted by Dartgod

Wait. I thought the cop lept out of his car and grabbed your bag?

Both valid, simultaneous. My denial of consent would have lasted longer than him taking it. He wasn't asking. The courts are very clear you must make the statement anyway, and I didn't know that at the time, so I never said anything. It is possible he might have stopped, and like I said we may never have gotten to the latter part of the incident if I had said those words, no way to know.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by underEJ

I had a cop speed up to me, a pedestrian on a side street, screech to a halt pointed at the corner where I stood, leap out of his car, grab my bag, dump it all over the hood of his car, find my ID, grab me and throw me onto the hood with all my stuff, repeatedly scream at me to tell him my name, pull my arm up behind my back, lean on me while he lifted my skirt up over my ass and did way more than "pat me down."

I was a 26 year old white woman, and I found out later he was looking for a 16 year old black girl who allegedly robbed a bank. I'll never cooperate with a cop ever for any reason. I have my ACLU phrases ready to be as law abiding as I can, but that will never happen to me again, or I'll be dead from resisting.

p.s. the universe agreed with me and that jackass is dead, killed in the line of duty.

Wow reading that got kinda weird at the skirt part. Assumed male gender I guess, my bad.

That's crazy.