Arrested

I was arrested one time, when I was in the military.  I worked the night shift, got off at 7:00 am.  My best friend Jeff and I left the flightline and he wanted to stop and check his mail at the base post office.  The parking lot was full, so I pulled over and he hopped out for like 15 seconds to quick dash and check his box.  My car was in gear, my foot was on the clutch, and my passenger door was open, and this fired up skycop came over and wrote me a ticket for “parking in a non-designated parking spot.”  Fuckin’ idiot.  I gritted my teeth and bore it, but when he was done – my best friend was back in the car asking “WTF?” and the skycop was walking away.  I savagely shoved it in reverse and flipped the bird to the asshole, whose back was turned.

Well, his buddy – a master sergeant cop was watching and came over and read me the riot act and started quoting articles of the UCMJ at me about “provoking speech and gestures”  Like, how could I provoke the guy when his effing back was turned?  They decided to make an example of me, took me to the cop shop, read me my rights, did the whole frisk, search, process… etc. I cooperated.  As they were frisking me, the guy doing the frisking was being watched.  It was obvious he was being evaluated. An hour later I was in my squadron commander’s office, with my branch chief, Eddie Carlisle, who really didn’t need this shit. Eddie was there long before me, and I think he explained to the commander that if I copped an attitude, they could kiss their operational readiness rate good bye. They were pretty disgusted that the skycops had nothing better to do than bust the ass of tired wrench turners.  I got a “letter of admonishment”  which was the lightest tap on the wrist I could get short of ignoring me, just so they could say they did something to me at the base commander’s stand-up.  Looking back, I think Major Humphries, my CO, was a pretty right guy.