THE "RUNAWAY": PARKING CRIME
by John Lee
The rookie [policeman] is faced with the situation where it is easier for him to become corrupt than to remain honest. --Knapp Commission Report
What happens to a kid who has a difficult and abusive home life, and then gets arrested by police?
Three years ago, Andrea was a 16 year old who was having trouble at home with her alcoholic father. She would often spend the night at her next-door neighbor's house, when her father became too abusive after drinking.
Andrea was a passenger in a car, when the driver was detained by police for the alleged traffic violation of "parking on private property after dark." There is no curfew in effect, so they had not committed any crime, and the young people had violated no traffic regulations. She told the officer she had not been drinking. There were no containers of alcohol in the vehicle.
The police asked if she would voluntarily agree to take the field sobriety test, which she did three times, and performed without difficulty. Andrea was arrested for underage consumption of alcohol.
At the jail, she was asked to voluntarily take the breath-alcohol test (under threat of losing her license), which she passed at 0.00% BAC. She became irritated with the officer, who then handcuffed her to a steel post for three hours. She was eventually released to her parents.
Because of the arrest, and the fact that her drunken father had in the past called police and declared her a runaway for spending the night at her next-door neighbor's house, Andrea was soon placed in a foster home. The children in the foster home (both boys and girls) were raped at night by the foster parents. She stayed there six months.
Andrea's attorney fees, fines and court costs totaled $3,000. The charges were dropped after attending a DWI school.
She and her mother do not feel they were treated fairly, and neither trusts the legal system. Her father has been sober for six months, but does not attend any Alcoholics Anonymous support group or get any type of medical or psychological treatment for preventing his alcoholism from recurring in the future. [Interview]
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