"Drug" bust

Everyone wants to know about the police incident, so I figured I'd write about that while it's fresh in my mind.

We were on the highway somewhere in Wisconsin.  Mike was driving, I was riding in the front seat, Jason and Kim were sleeping in the back.  We passed a police car in the median, but were going with the flow of traffic and doing nothing wrong.  He however saw the big black Mercedes Sprinter, Mike looking like a crazy hippie driving, and me still in my pajamas at 1pm with rock star sunglasses I bought at a gas station, and decided he needed to follow us.

We're totally Bonnie and Clyde

Based on everything that happened, I honestly think he started following us trying to find/make a reason to pull us over.  At one point about 5-10 minutes after we passed him, Mike went to switch lanes, and suddenly we're being pulled over.  According to officer Wozniak (I believe he was a State Trooper), Mike almost switched lanes into him.  Mike hadn't see him at all.  At this point I still naively thought maybe he was in Mike's blind spot and he had actually maybe almost hit him.  But as I said, just how everything else went, I think he purposely made it happen so he could pull us over.  He walked up to the passenger window, and asked for Mike's license and the insurance.  He also took the paperwork about the rental agreement, and it was mentioned that it was a rental in a discussion about insurance.  He asked about a piece of cardboard on the front dashboard that may have been "blocking" the windshield.  We explained that it was a picture Mike had bought for his sister, and we put it there so it wouldn't get crushed.  He asked where we were heading, and where we had come from.  Mike mentioned we were a rock band from Austin, TX.  I'm pretty sure this is when he decided he need to go back to run Mike's license and, more importantly, call for a drug sniffing dog.  Because we were a rock band.  He comes back, and asks us both to step out of the vehicle.  Mike gets out, but I have to put on my shoes and jacket.  I get out, and they're patting Mike down for weapons.  I walk back there.

Officer to Me: "Do you have any weapons on you?"
Me: "No, but there's a cookie in my pocket."

Yes.  That is actually what I said.  I'll explain later my reasoning for that statement, but for now, I'd like you all to think about how much of a ridiculous answer that was.

He pats down my coat a little bit, but I'm wearing 2 pairs of pajama pants and don't have any pockets to hide anything in.  I can't remember the order of things, but at some point he asks Mike the last time we were smoking marijuana in the van.  He answers honestly that we never have.  He tells us someone has, and at some point a guy gets out from another vehicle parked behind him with a drug sniffing dog.  The dog starts sniffing around the van.  Mike asks if he needs him to open the back end of the van where all the gear is stored.  He says it's fine.  Kim said from inside, she could see the officer do a certain hand motion, then the dog would jump up at a spot on the van and start barking a little.  The officer comes back and says the dog keeps getting really antsy on the traffic side of the road.  So, is the dog barking because of the traffic?  Because he can smell Kim and Jason?  Because the officer is doing a hand motion the dog is trained to bark at?  I don't know.  But officer Wozniak tells Mike and I we can sit in the back of his car to "get out of the cold."  As he's putting us in the car, he said something set the dog off at the front of the van and they need to search it.  I mentioned to him that Jason and Kim were sleeping in the back.  He gets them out.  He runs Jason's license, and we can see Kim leaning over whispering in the officer's ear and motioning to her throat because she's loosing her voice.  He comes back to the car, grabs a pen and paper, and she writes something down for him.  Over the next hour Mike and I sit helpless in the back of a cramped police car, watching Kim and Jason stand out in the cold.  We couldn't even get the other officer's attention to see if we could switch with Kim or give her an extra coat.

At one point I notice this little round thing in the corner of the ceiling with a wire running to the front seat.  I wondered (in my head) if it was a microphone.  Mike told me later that the thing I poked in the back seat was a microphone.  I hope they listen to the audio looking for something incriminating, only to feel like assholes listening to us talk about how of all the bands in the world, they pulled over the lamest, most straight edge band looking for drugs, and us talking about how bad we felt for Kim standing out in the cold.

After at least an hour, he comes out smiling with something cupped in his hand.  He goes and gets something out of his trunk.  Mike said he could see through the space that he pulled out a bin full of joints.  This leads me to believe even more that it's just his job to pull over people and harass them looking for drugs.  He gets in the front seat of the car, and puts what he found, -which was a LEAF from a TREE that either blew in the car or got stuck to someones shoe- in a little thing and shakes it up to test it.  It's not marijuana, but SOMEONE's been smoking marijuana in the van (according to him)!!!!!!!!!  I mentioned it was a rental we just picked up the beginning of March.  He acted like this was the first time he had heard this.  I even pointed out the rental paperwork sitting on his dash.  He ignored what I was saying and was all "Oh, don't worry, I'll give you all of your paperwork back."  At some point when I was in the back seat, he had handed me the paper he had given Kim, which now has her full name and birthday written on it, and asked me to write down my name and birthday because my license was back in the van.  He lets Mike and I out and says he's just going to give Mike a warning about unsafe lane switching.  We get back to the van, and he can't find me in the system and asks me what state I live in.  I told him I recently moved from Michigan to California, and gave him my drivers license to run.  Everything checks out, he gives Mike his warning, and he sends us on our way after wasting over an hour of our and his time, and tax payer dollars.  We get off at the next exit and stop at a truck stop to recoup. 

EVERYTHING in the van has been moved around, ripped apart, and/or thrown into a pile in the back seat.

Thumbs up if you've been violated by law enforcement!

Kim and Jason went in to warm up and get Kim some hot tea and something to eat while Mike and I tried to put the van back into some sort of order.  I had been keeping my stuff tucked into certain spots so I could always find it.  I had to hunt it all down.  I still don't know where one of my shirts is :(  The e-mail sign up sheets and my inventory lists were scattered all over the floor to the side of the seats where it was really hard to get to.  The picture we told officer Wozniak we didn't want to get crushed, had a corner bent.  The really awesome doll someone hand made for Kimberly had the head ripped off (probably purposely looking for drugs inside) and the base was broken off.  Luckily Mike managed to mostly fix it.  (Go Mike!)  As far as we can tell, all important stuff - wallets, computers, cell phones, etc. - are all here.  We also learned while this was all going on we all had the same fear - what if he plants something in the van?  Luckily he didn't.  So I guess things could have been a lot worse.

I was telling Shawn, the drummer from Picture Me Broken, about this at the show.  He said a few minutes after they passed us on the side of the road (we were all back in the van by this time), a police car kept following him.  At one point he drove up next to him and kept riding right next to him and looking over at him.  Probably the same guy, or another guy with the same job, trying to find a reason to pull them over or something suspicious about them....


So that's that.  At least all that I can remember.  And the cookie thing- we had been at Starbucks the day before.  I bought an Outrageous Oatmeal Raisin Cookie and Mike bought a tube of chocolate covered fruit pieces.  He stuck the rest of the tube in my pocket at some point, and I shoved the rest of my cookie in there was well.  So I had this awkward bulge in my coat pocket.  But, the next time you're having a bad day, picture me, on the side of the road, in my pajamas, telling a State Trooper that there's a cookie in my pocket.  :D