ninemm wrote:He found out that there was a warrant out for someone with the exact same name (same middle initial - different middle name) as mine for poaching in Angelina County and evading arrest. The guy they were after was 19 years old, 5'3" tall and 125 pounds. I was 43, 5'11" and 200 pounds. Why they would send a single inexperienced officer to arrest someone charged with evading arrest and known to possess a weapon is a whole 'nuther story.
seamusTX, thanks for reviving this thread. I either never saw it, or I had forgotten all about it, but I have a couple of questions that occur to me after reading through it.
1. Regarding the "mean cop" thing and the arrestee's property... don't the cops give the arrestee a duplicate copy of a signed form with an itemized inventory of his possessions? And if a released prisoner shows up at the property room with this form and tells the property clerk that his ID is with his property, wouldn't a reasonable property clerk pull the property box/bag/envelope to confirm that the ID in the container matches the person who is requesting them?
2. I think I saw a little hitch in the Miranda thing which I previously did not know... am I correct that Miranda only applies to statements made in response to police questioning, but it does not apply to anything an arrestee says of his own volition and without prompting?
ninemm, I had a similar experience back in the mid '70s when I was attending Texas A&M. I got a phone call one afternoon from a man who identified himself as the local constable, and who asked if The Annoyed Man was there. I said that's me, and he asked me how long I planned to be there. I told him I was going to be home for a couple more hours, but then I was going out, and I asked him why he needed to know. He said he had a warrant for my arrest.
WHAT?!?!?!?!? I asked him what for, and he said that I had been passing bad checks around College Station and Bryan. This was a false charge, so I asked him how he got my phone number and address. He said that he knew that the check kiter was a student at A&M, so he had called the registrar's office and had gotten my number and address that way.
Well, that's when a bunch of bells and whistles went off in my head. I had transferred to A&M from UTEP as a sophomore, and at the beginning of the semester when I went to pick up my A&M class cards packet, they had handed me an incorrect packet, for someone with the same first name, middle initial, and last name, who was also a sophomore. I didn't notice the error until after the office had closed, so it took another day to correct the problem. The other guy was a sophomore in Mechanical Engineering and his middle name was "James". I was a sophomore in Biomedical Science, and my middle name is "Jacques." He had picked up his packet before I got there, and they gave him my packet because mine was first in order in the file box they were in. That's how I wound up with his, and that's how I knew that there was another TAM going to A&M. We got things straightened out, although I never met the other guy.
And of course, when the constable called the registrar's office to get an address for The Annoyed Man, they gave him mine, not the other guy's, because mine came before his in their files. I suppose that this would not have happened at UT.
So I told the constable that he had the wrong guy and gave him the correct information. He said not to leave the house, and that he would call me back to confirm that I was correct. He did phone a little later to tell me I was off the hook.
6 months or so later, the constable comes to my door, and at first I thought the worst, but it turned out he was just campaigning for re-election. I reminded him of our previous phone conversations, which he remembered, and he told me that they did eventually catch the other guy, and that he had a new job stamping license plates for the state.
But other than that, and a couple of times as a young long-hair when a car I was riding in got pulled over and rousted, I've never been arrested or charged with a crime and my LEO contacts have been pretty benign.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT
but the curve is short..
