“Can I talk to you for a second?” the voice asked from behind me.
I turned and found a Scottsdale police car had pulled up alongside me, the officer inside motioning me to the next street. He pulled to a stop and quickly two other cars pulled up with him. Two officers got out of their cars and approached me.
“We were curious if you knew anything about a drive-by shooting that happened up the street from here last week.”
“No,” I answered.
The first officer reached inside a file folder, took out a surveillance camera picture, and handed it to me. It was a picture of me at a convenience store. Only it wasn’t me. The guy had a little more hair than me and was wearing one of those Tweety Bird t-shirts where Tweety was looking all gangsta. I’ll be the first to admit I have zero sense of style, but I have more sense than to wear one of those shirts.
He explained the guy in the photo had been involved in an argument at a Circle K store up the street a few blocks and it had escalated into a shooting. The Tweety Bird guy had shot another guy as guy #2 was walking back toward his apartment. A civilian employee, they said, spotted me walking down the street and called me in. That was a lie, of course. I’d stopped to take a look at a radar van pulled off to the side of the road, curious to see what was inside. No doubt THAT person was the one who called his buddies. Either way…
Wow, I thought. That guy looks just like me. Put him in any other t-shirt and in nearly any other convenience store (I didn’t shop at Circle K/76 because their gas was always $.10/more per gallon than anyone else), and I would have told you the guy was me.
The cops asked me for some ID. I didn’t have any on me since the shorts I was wearing didn’t have any pockets. I wasn’t planning on producing anything for the authorities, so I didn’t plan ahead. I did though recite my license number, my cars license plate number, and my home address for the officers. I didn’t have anything to hide, after all.
They took a couple of Polaroids of me and sent me on my way. They assured me everything would get sorted out and I probably didn’t have anything to worry about. “Besides,” cop #1 said, “your glasses look completely different from his.”
And so I walked home, a little shaken, but whatever.
The next night, Thursday, I went to the Diamondbacks game with a date, took her back home in the north end of Phoenix, and made the long drive back to my place. I arrived around 12:30 or so.
As I got out of my car, three or four other cars surrounded me from different angles and their doors opened all at once.
“Scottsdale Police, get your hands where I can see them.”
My hands immediately went up. Wow. They really think its me.
“Walk backward toward my voice. Put your hands on your head and get down on your knees.”
A full felony arrest. I’d heard about these in college but had never actually seen one. Except, of course, on Cops.
An officer came over, cuffed my wrists and stood me up.
“Do you have any needles or anything sharp in your pockets,” he asked.
“No.”
He searched me and asked if I knew why I was being arrested. I told him I figured it had to do with my being questioned the other night, but didn’t offer anything more.
They drove me over to the police station near Scottsdale Stadium, and ran me through the whole finger print/mugshot thing. One of the officers went out of his way to thank me for being cooperative.
“It’s safer for everyone,” I replied. He agreed.
It must have been 3am before they finally stuck me in a cell. It was bare except for a thin mattress on a concrete bunk. And a toilet, of course.
They got me up around 7:30 or so to transport me to another, unmarked, station. I was driven there by a young female officer. We made small talk along the way. I asked her if she watched Seinfeld. She did. I told her I felt as though I’d fallen into bizarro world. It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to me. There’s someone out there who looks just like me, I explained. Maybe she bought it, maybe she didn’t. I certainly wasn’t offering her anything.
When we arrived at the second station, they checked me in, and stuck me in a new cell. Alone, again. After a few hours, a detective around my age came to retrieve me. He shook my hand and explained the process. They had some questions for me. I didn’t realize until weeks later that this guy was “good cop”. We walked down to an interrogation room, where I met “bad cop.” I made the mistake of trying to shake his hand. After a few awkward moments, he finally gave in. When I sat down, they started in.
Contrary to what the current administration would have us all believe, the point of an interrogation is not to ascertain the truth, it is to produce a confession. If the confession also happens to be the truth, all the better, but it’s really immaterial. So it was from this angle they chose to pursue me. We spent two hours thrusting and parrying. They told me they knew it was me. The victim, who survived, by the way, had identified me from the Polaroid and got physically ill at the sight of me. That’s always nice to hear. Bad cop would put the screws to me, then good cop would try another angle before bad cop would go back in for the kill. At one point bad cop got up out of his chair, squatted down next to me, and very firmly demanded I quit lying and tell the truth about what had happened that night. The truth was I was sitting at home studying for my marketing class. How boring can a guy be?
The session ended when I finally asked for an attorney. It was something I should have done the moment they read me my Miranda rights, but figuring the truth was on my side, there was no reason not to talk, you know? I asked for an attorney when they started asking me to take a lie detector test. I wanted to get legal counsel before we started breaking out the divining rods. They told me my refusal made it look like I had something to hide. I didn’t care. We were through talking.
It was back to the cell. I asked them to turn the phone on so I could start making calls. To this point, they’d denied me access to a phone. They’d let me know I was going down to the Madison Street Jail for further detention until I could see a judge. It was time to call family.
Uncle Darrell knew exactly who it was and where I was the second he picked up the phone. He knew I knew better than to call collect. We both got a quick chuckle out of my predicament before he called my dad at the office to let him know what was up.
All of this, no doubt, was being recorded. Sometimes I wonder if there ever came a moment when good cop and bad cop knew they had the wrong dude. From their perspective though, the Scottsdale police department had recently gotten some heat from the local press for the percentage of minorities they were arresting. So guilty or not, I was quite a coup for them. An innocent white guy. If they played their cards right, they’d be able to arrest two white suspects for one crime and drive that percentage down just a hair. A brilliant move from their perspective.
Around noon or so, I was cuffed again and driven down to Madison Street Jail, Maricopa County’s intake facility. Just a few months before, Sammy The Bull had wandered through the same place. In case you’re not already aware, Maricopa County’s sheriff is Joe Arpaio. “America’s Toughest Sheriff.” He of the pink underwear and green baloney. I was going to be his guest for a little while.
The intake facility at Madison Street was known as “the horseshoe”. It’s basically a series of tanks arranged in a “U-shape” on the ground floor of the jail. As you wind your way through the different tanks, the deputies process your paperwork, do your medical intake, photograph and fingerprint you again, and then send you in front of a judge.
It was that very first tank they sent me into which set the tone for the rest of the weekend.
As I walked through the door, a guy in the back of the room shouted “Hey! It’s Butterbean!” Butterbean, of course, being a 300-plus pound boxer known for both his girth and his shaved head. A perfect nickname for me.
I politely waved and took a seat on the floor. Sheriff Joe doesn’t believe in such a thing as overcrowding. So while all 15 or so bunks in the room were occupied, there were probably twice as many men stuffed inside. With all the smell and noise you would expect. There were thieves, junkies, drunks, and any number of other criminals in with me. It was a concentrated side of society I’d never seen.
An hour or so after I arrived at Madison Street, I heard my name called and was told I had a visitor. It was the attorney my parents hired. He was a nice enough guy who promised he’d be tough with the system and wed get everything sorted out. He asked me what had happened, I told him.
“So you’re innocent?” he asked, mildly shocked.
“Well yeah,” I replied.
“Oh! Well that makes things much easier.”
Good to know.
He spent a few minutes telling me what to expect. He said I’d see a judge around 9 or so and she would set my bail and then wed make arrangements to have me out sometime on Monday.
I swallowed hard.
“Monday?”
“It’s the weekend,” he said.
Wow.
He told me not to worry, to just keep to myself and everything would work out alright. He said he’d never had a client get injured inside the jail. Good to know.
He handed me his card, shook my hand, and he took off. I went back to the tank. The card was the only thing I had with me for the rest of that weekend. I remember reading it over and over when I couldn’t sleep. Funny how little things like that can become so meaningful.
Like the lawyer said, I was called before the judge around 9:30. He was there to help represent me. The cool thing about hiring your own attorney for these things is you get shoved to the front of the line for everything. I was the first guy called up. The judge read the charges and asked if I understood them. I replied I did. She then set about determining bail. My attorney pleaded my case. Good kid. Full-time job. Never been arrested before. Blah blah blah. He’d told me earlier to expect $250,000. She set it at $97,500. I thought we got off light. The guys in the back let out a whistle to let me know that I hadn’t. Suddenly I had a little cred.
The attorney then had a few more words for me. Mostly that he’d spoken with my dad and he was flying down. A few other things. Then he was gone. And I was moved further into the process.
The judge essentially separates those who are going home that night from those who aren’t. Guys who could get away with posting $500 and less did and were home within hours. Guys like me were moved around the bend of the horseshoe and were prepped to be moved to another facility. It’s a slow process which involves a lot of waiting.
The next tank I was moved into had the first motormouth I’d encountered. He was working his way around the room, asking where guys were from and what they were in for. I had a quick decision to make. I didn’t want to say I didn’t do anything. That would be whining. I didn’t want to say what I stood accused of. That might make me a target. So I had to find a third path.
“What are you in for?” the guy asked.
“Giving false information to a cop.”
“Who did you say you were?”
“Butterbean.”
And with that, I’d made 20 friends. And a jail nickname was born. Wherever I went after that, I was Butterbean. Didn’t matter where. The next tank? There was a guy in there who’d already heard the story. Into the showers? Same deal. Heck, in the visiting room, I was greeted four or five times as Butterbean. Fascinating how quickly word travels on the inside.
So where are we? Friday night? I spent the next 36 hours in the same tank with a rotating cast of characters as we waited for a bunk to open at our final destination. Most of the guys went to the Tent City although a few were sent to more exotic locales like Durango or the ominous sounding Towers. Me? After what could only be described as a very cold interaction with some administrator who knew the victim, I was sent upstairs into maximum security. I was issued a badge and a set of striped garments, and yes…even the pink undies.
I asked a guard whether going to maximum security was a good thing. He said it depended on your outlook.
“There’s a lot fewer games in maximum security,” he said.
Sounded good to me.
A couple of things about this particular weekend. Not only was it Easter, but the Blazers were also at the beginning of the 2000 playoff run. They were playing Minnesota that weekend and I needed a score. You haven’t lived until you’ve asked a certified gang banger for an NBA score. Needless to say, I didn’t find out hw my Blazers had done until Monday when I saw my first sports section.
I was bunked with a gay, diabetic bank robber. The guy was old school. He had me immediately sized up and knew I had no business being in there. He told me we’d be staying in our cell 24/7 until I was let out. No mixing with anyone. He assured me I’d be fine. What choice did I have?
My cellmate, in an effort to establish his own cred, hung his first pair of prison issued socks over the bars of the cell door. He instantly drew a crowd of other prisoners. See, his socks had four digits on them. They’re on some bizarre hybrid of numbers and letters now. The four digits meant my new best friend had first been exposed to the correction system before I was born. He explained he’d finally had enough of the running and figured he’d serve his three years and go live out his years with his mom. A nice strategy, I suppose. I hope it worked out for him.
Monday finally rolled around, and just as my attorney told me, I was let out around 1 or so. On my way out, I was given my next court date and was asked if I was going to be there.
“With bells on,” I replied.
She got a good chuckle out of that. There was another guard there who quickly picked up on the fact I was green to the whole jail experience.
“You don’t belong in here, do you?” he asked.
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
Huh.
After my release, I walked to the address on the card. My attorney laughed as I walked in. He and his assistant had been arguing over whether to go pick me up. The attorney assured his Kato that I’d find the place alright on my own. I did.
We hopped in his car, drove to my girlfriend’s place, picked up my keys, and headed back to my apartment. The cops had searched my place and my car. They left my car unlocked and it was ransacked by the neighbor kids. A nice sight to come home to. My apartment wasn’t in much better shape. They turned the whole thing upside down looking for a gun and that Tweety Bird t-shirt. There were piles of stuff in the middle of the floor. The TV was off its stand. My mattress was on the floor. The place was just a mess. They took, and still have, by the way, a few articles of clothing, but didn’t take anything else.
I finally went back to work a week or so later. Every day when I came home, there was a police officer parked in the spot right next to mine. He was waiting for me to emerge from the suspect vehicle, a blue pick-up truck. No dice, of course, since my only whip at the time was my ‘95 Accord. But that didn’t stop them from letting me know they knew who I was and where I lived.
Did they ever catch the real guy? My attorney says they did. I have my doubts. I prefer to think I’m still the prime suspect. As I learned on the inside, you’re nothing without your cred. And remaining the prime suspect lets me keep it.
