A new acquaintance of Michael’s asked for a ride from Walmart. His passenger, when he heard the police was following them, asked Michael to drop him off in an alley, jumped out suddenly, and ran. The police continued to follow and surrounded Michael’s car. He was stopped (for no reason). Car searched (unjustifiably). Michael was arrested.
Michael
Date of incident: December 3, 2018
Time of incident: 2:00 a.m.
I was going to Walmart on SE 14th Street. When I arrived, there was 4-5 squad cars in the parking lot. I assumed something happened. A guy (“D”) that I had met at a friend’s house earlier had asked me for a ride home. I told him I would take him. He asked if I would stop by Walmart and I did. I stayed in the car while he went into the store.
We begin to leave the parking lot as most of the squad cars were leaving as well. A police car followed me and then the cherry lights came on. The guy told me his house was in the alley, so I turned into the alley and when I began to stop, he jumped out of the car and ran.
I was confused and continued to drive slowly to get to a well-lit spot for safety reasons. I pulled over. Suddenly, 2-3 police cars pinned my car in. Four cops ran to my car with guns drawn. They pulled me out of my car, handcuffed me and then placed me in a squad car. At that time, they interrogated me about the guy that ran.
Next, officers proceeded to search my car. They never asked if they could search it. Upon searching my car, they found less than a gram of weed and some sleeping pills (4 of them) in a small plastic tupperware container that I had used to gather them up because a friend of mine (Sheila) had spilled them in my car a few days earlier.
Officer Minnehan came back to the squad to talk to me. He told me I was being charged with eluding, possession of marijuana and pills. He said, “well, I guess you are not going to tell me who the guy was, so we are going to charge you with all of this.” He also said that all I had to do was tell him who the guy was, and he would let me go. I couldn’t tell him because all I knew was his name was “D” and I wasn’t sure where he lived (exact house)
Officers Minnehan and Spear continued their conversation with each other as I sat in the back of the squad car. I asked Officer Minnehan what his reason for initially putting his lights on, he didn’t respond to me.
As they put me in the wagon, I asked Minnehan for his name and his badge number. He responded that it was going to be on the paper work. He then asked me, “What are you going to do, sue me?” There was no further conversation between us after that and they took me to jail.