Outstanding Police Work Article at Skatepark of Tampa

Outstanding Police Work

Posted on Tuesday, December 23, 2008 by Bristol

By Brandon Bristol

A few days ago Angel Carela, Stephen Buggica, Shane Nichols, Chris "Boston" Mannion, and I set out on a skate mission to get some footage for our upcoming video "Trife Life." Things were going well. We had already hit two spots and got clips at both. With a little time left before I had to work, we saw a spot on Columbus that looked like it could be entertaining for the video.

There was a fence that was partially knocked over by a van that Shane wanted to ollie off. He snuck through a hole and got ready to make it happen. Time was running low, so I went and grabbed my new Pathfinder that I just got the day before. I jumped in and went to collect up our crew. Shane was up there coming pretty close, and then he was like, "Alright, this is the one…let’s do this." I lit up a cigarette in the car and Boston headed towards the passenger seat. He walked no more the five feet and yelled, "FIVE-O!" From then, I pretty much figured we were screwed.

Officer 426 gets out of his car all hot, like, "What the f*#k do you guys think you're doing?!?!" Of course we tried to explain that we're just skateboarders who mean no harm, and we're just trying to put out a video. Of course he said that skating is "a waste of time" and that "I know you guys are rebelling against society," or something to that effect. That's always the case, right? So he's reading us the Riot Act and treating us all like animals the whole time.

Shane tried to ask, "Why are we being charged for this? Shouldn't we just get a trespass warning?" which only made the officer more furious and lead him to believe that we were all "smartasses," which we are, but only to a certain extent. I was just ready to get the hell out of there. Shane's curious manner finally pissed off the officer and his now two other counterparts enough to get the cuffs out and make us all even more uncomfortable. By now there's no reasoning with any of the officers. We were just getting sent straight to jail.

He got us on burglary, criminal mischief, and trespassing charges. Only one of those makes any sense to me. They wasted my whole day, made me miss work, and wouldn’t even let me call Ternell to let him know I'd be late. Lucky for me I'm flexible and I got my phone out of my pocket and made a call to T-Stance. The rest of our night was spent waiting around for our parents to post bail for our beyond-whack charges.

Get this, Angel got skipped during fingerprinting and somehow they confused him with a sexual offender. Looks like TPD is really on top of things. We had our jailhouse ham n’ cheese sandwiches, too, but not without getting hassled by the locals saying, “Give it up, man…I'm hungry." We were all too hungry and over it, so we shined those dudes on with the quickness.

I just want to give a big shout out to Ternell, Danny, and Cory for coming to bail us out (but we had already made bail) and of course all the parents who came and got our asses out of there. Poor Angel had to wait until like 2:30am to get out because of that ridiculous mix up.

I guess the moral of this story is to still have fun, but don't expect the cops to let you slide every time…because after all they are "THE LAW!"

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