Respect for Your Elders

I received a call of woman trespassing at an apartment complex notorious for crime and drugs. We've been trying to clean the place up lately by arresting everyone on the property without a good reason to be there.

As I pulled up I saw the 50 year old woman sitting in the rocks in front of the main entrance. She was white, skinny, blonde, and filthy. Trash and plastic bags surrounded her and she was holding a crack pipe. Her arms featured scar upon scar of needle tracks and her partially-toothed crystal-meth smile was priceless.

"This isn't my pipe, officer.", she states. "I'm just holding it for a friend."
I tried explaining ownership of drug paraphernalia is determined by the person in possession of it. Her puzzled expression told me she either didn't have a clue what I just said or didn't care.
"But it's not mine. I'm just holding it. I don't even smoke crack anymore. I just use heroin and meth", she advised.

I got her ID and ran her name in my patrol car computer. In a few seconds I heard the familiar and welcomed beeping of a warrant hit. It was for misdemeanor theft but good enough for an arrest (and a surefire way to ensure I wouldn't receive any more calls about her trespassing for the night.)

I placed her in handcuffs and drove toward the police station for booking. She told me she was prostitute up until about 5 years ago and is a heroin addict. A few days prior she bought a cup of coffee and stole a $1 package of doughnuts from a convenience store. She was arrested but didn't show up for her court date (hence the warrant).

She pleaded for me to let her go and offered to give me the locations of several drug houses in the area. I politely declined her offer. She went into a rage about what a terrible cop I was and how I would be fired for arresting a woman on such a simple charge. She then told me if I tried to bring her to jail she would go berserk and it would take a whole fleet of officers to drag her out of the car.

She wasn't kidding.

When I pulled up to the station, she started screaming, kicking, spitting, and flailing around. Two of us carried her inside a placed her in a holding cell. She screamed every profanity I've ever heard (plus a few new ones). She repeatedly insisted she could not breath, was having a heart attack, and was vomiting. At one point she moaned, "I'm dying......I'm dying......" and then quietly, "I just died."

I could see she was not in any need of medical help and told her to stop faking it. She went batty and started slamming her head into the wall (but used her hand to cushion the blow). I then put her in my patrol car and headed for the county jail. I rolled down the rear windows so she could plead for help from passing motorists on the freeway.

"LADY! Help, He's hitting me, He's hurting me, police brutality!"
Since I was driving and she was in the rear seat separated from me by a Plexiglas shield, nobody seemed to believe her claims of being actively assaulted.
"MISTER! Help"
"LADY" "MISTER"

She screamed at everyone she could all the way to the jail. Some people laughed but most were too freaked out to even look at her. She repeatedly told me she was not going into the jail and that she knew all the head honchos of the jail system, city council, and news media. I would lose my job and be made a fool.

Once inside her antics continued. She berated the jail staff (even calling a female lieutenant 'Miss Piggy'). The jail intake nurse asked her if she was taking any prescribed medications. "Yeah, Oxycontin, Methadone, Cocaine, Heroin, Crystal-Meth". In the final search room before being placed in a cell she went for the grand finale.

"LET'S DO THIS!!" she screamed and yanked her pants and underwear to the ground. If you want to know how unsavory the image was, just picture your grandmother as a dirty, homeless, drugged out hooker. Then picture her naked from the waist down.