My 18-year-old self had just bought a bag of Chips Ahoy! cookies at the convenience store, and some weed from my friend who worked the counter there. The store was in a predominantly low-income black neighborhood on the East side of Joliet, and any young white guy walking around there was certain to look out-of-place.

I exited the store with the bag of cookies in my left hand and the dime bag palmed in my right, and immediately spotted a police car cruising down the street. As it passed me by, I opened the Chips Ahoy! bag, surreptitiously stuffed the weed in there with the cookies while I grabbed a cookie from the bag. As I began eating it, I glanced back behind me just in time to see the cops making a U-turn. My heart sank.

They rode up alongside me and the cop on the passenger side of the car asked me what I was doing walking around here. My first instinct was to play the old, "Boy, am I glad to see you officers! I'm just a naiive kid lost in this bad neighborhood. Please help!" routine, but then I noticed by the suspicious way they were eyeing me, dressed like a punk rocker and casually munching on a chocolate chip cookie as I was, that approach probably wouldn't serve me well in this situation.

So I blathered nervously about having ridden the bus down there to visit a friend of mine but he wasn't home (not too far off from the truth), and now here I was walking down Washington street hoping the next bus shows up soon to get me the hell out of here.

The older cop who was driving shifted the car into park and said to me, "Well you just happen to fit the description of an armed robbery suspect we're looking for. Mind if we ask you a few questions?" Pffffft, I knew they were going to fuck with me! The cops instructed me to move to the back of the car, then to empty my pockets and place my belongings on the trunk lid. I dropped the bag of cookies on the ground by the curb, then walked over to their car and did as they instructed.

After looking at my ID, they began addressing me by my first name like we were best buddies or something, except that they used this slightly mocking tone, calculated just to be irritating. They asked me all kinds of questions, the name of my friend whom I was visiting, where he lived, if I knew his phone number, if they were to call him right now would he corroborate my story, etc. I said everything I could to make my story sound plausible. After all, if they checked up on any of it they'd know it was a lie anyway so I figured I had nothing to lose. Finally they asked me what "Dead Kennedys" meant--a reference to the t-shirt I was wearing-- and if I owned a gun (!). I told them the DKs were a rock band from California and no, I owned no weapons of any kind.

They told me to put my belongings away and asked me if I needed a ride back home. Suddenly I was conflicted. I really didn't want to leave my $10 bag of weed lying there on the ground after all I'd gone through to get it, but I also didn't want to take it with me in the back of a squad car either. I said, "Yes, please sir. I'd like to get home." The cop from the passenger side of the car opened the back door of the squad, and as I started getting in he said, "Oh hey, don't forget your cookies." I said, "Oh yeah. Thanks."

As I stepped to the curb and picked up the bag, the older cop, the driver, said "Hey John." I cringed a little as he walked back around the rear of the squad car and approached me.

He said, "Give me that bag." Slowly, I handed it over to him. He took it, gave it a few squeezes, then said, "Sorry to disappoint you John, but I'm gonna have to dump all your cookies out on the ground." He opened the bag, turned it over and dumped the contents out into the gutter. Right there amidst the crumbs and broken Chips Ahoy!s was my dime bag. The other cop stepped behind me and said "Well! What do you know? What's this we have here, John?"...

A ripping good yarn, Panic.

Colonel Panic wrote:..... Right there amidst the crumbs and broken Chips Ahoy!s was my dime bag. The other cop stepped behind me and said "Well! What do you know? What's this we have here, John?"...

We have the setup, but where's the punchline?

The title of the thread is "Howdja get busted", not "What happened after ya got busted".

Luckily the judge let me off with a warning (it was my first offense) and my parents never found out.

I'm glad you only got a warning.

Spoke wrote:

Wood Goblin wrote:

The Code is Almighty wrote:Logging into my email account and reading what I was writing to people.

I don't follow you. Did you accidentally send emails to the wrong people or something?

apparently she looked at the emails he'd sent.

Ach, of course. For some reason I thought that he was the one logging on.

Oh, and good story, Panic.

The cops were fucking with me about it the whole ride down to the courthouse. "Boy, John! You almost had us fooled there. I bet you think you're pretty smart, just not smart enough!"

I was on the verge of tears, worrying that my parents were going to find out.

Best part of the story.....you didn't give up your friend.

The opportunity never arose, but I probably wouldn't have anyway. He was associated with gangbangers or was one himself, and I didn't need that kind of trouble.

I didn't. Never cheated on a girl, not even once, and never got busted for any criminal-type stuff except once.

I was a kid, going shopping at Venture with my mom and sister. It was the year that the Nintendo Entertainment System was being introduced; I distinctly remember seeing one in a glass display case, complete with the robot, and thinking "what the hell is that?".

I went off on my own to the toy section, to buy some guns for my GI Joes. They had accessory packs, guns and backpacks and stuff, that cost I dunno something like $2.50. I only had like $2. So I stealthfully took the price tag off of something that only cost like $1.25 and stuck it over the price tag on the GI Joe accessory pack. Everything was cool.

After I bought it, as we were about to walk out the doors to the parking lot, a guy stopped us and explained to my mom what happened. She didn't believe him, cause I was a good kid and all and had no history of stealing anything. I said it was true, and he took us to a room in the back.

They showed her the video surveillance tape of me in action (I had no idea to look out for cameras, I was just looking for people). They agreed not to press charges for whatever reason.

My mom was super disappointed in me, and I was grounded for a couple weeks. I don't know if she ever told my dad. I don't think he woulda given a huge shit anyway. It was like fucking 75 cents that I was "stealing".

There's a different story where I'm hanging out with a buddy of mine and a cop searches our bags and frisks us and when he gets to my buddy's crotched film cannister with weed in it he says "That ain't a dick!!!!". That's the funniest part of the story, other than maybe when the cop told him to throw the film cannister and metal hitter down into a storm sewer, and I asked the cop if that was really the correct use of a storm sewer or good for the environment. But I wasn't really terribly close to being busted there, so...

Yep, squeaky clean, this guy.