re: #148 S’latch

I don’t know if Minnesota has a “Stop and identify” statute. But the idea is really offensive and it ought to be unconstitutional.

However, these statutes authorize police to detain and request identification or arrest.

But, it ought to be an unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause.

Yeah…found that out myself once. Where I used to work back in the early 00’s I would grab lunch and park in a library parking lot to eat and read the paper. Did this for like 3 years or more in a row, same time, same place.

The library was also next to a school. The playground of the school was just beyond that probably a football field away.

One day I finished eating and was just reading the newspaper. When I caught some movement in my rearview mirror. I look up and sure enough, a female officer is standing a the back corner of my car hand on gun. I turn around and ask her what’s up.

She asks what I am doing and to provide some ID. I ask what for. I am told the principal at the school called and reported me for being a stalker and looking at the kids on the playground.

WHOA!!! Back up now. I explained I am doing what I have been doing for the past three years and now it is a problem. I gave them my license and business card that identified I worked about two blocks away (just past the trees of the playground in crow flight.

The officer says I need to move along and they don’t want to see me there ever again. Fuck! What did I do to deserve this.

I stewed about it for the whole afternoon and when I got off work drove right to the small (Columbus ‘burb) town cop shop and asked to talk to the man in charge.

I told him my whole story and he said he understood, but everyone from the police woman to the principal was just doing their job and that I should have expected it parking right by the school like that. He said they had every right to ask for ID and assume I could be trouble,

I asked how they missed me for all those years. He told me don’t be a smart ass. I saw I was getting nowhere. I told him I was extremely disappointed by the whole thing and being a bit guilty and having to prove who I was, and I was still left feeling like I was some kind of pervert.

I asked him if he thought if I could any longer feel like I was a free person in the United States. And then I walked out the door. Fucking cop was an arrogant asshole and treated me like I was still suspicious. Once a perp always a perp.

And I had even done the design and graphics for their fucking D.A.R.E. program and worked with their D.A.R.E. instruction, their youth officer.

I learned a lot. And I was probably 50 or so at the time, professional, nice new car, and white.

Still pisses me off thinking about it. And yes, I understand kids need protecting. But so do individual rights when the person has not done anything. I wasn’t even parked where I could spot the kids if I wanted to, and had my face buried in the newspaper.

By the way. I did several graphics packages for local D.A.R.E cars. One of the cops (Dublin) was later arrested for having child porn on his computer at the cop station. Brilliant. Go figure.