In the spring of 1989, I received a shock that forever changed my life and the way that I look at the world. I was 17 and in the 11th grade. In spite of being something between a punker and, as one friend of mine disparagingly called them, "cool new order kids", I was fairly conservative. I had a very traditional, jingoistic, patriotic view of the U.S. and its place in the world. I believed that we were the great civil democracy that needed to show the rest of the world how to do things. I rather abruptly had my view of this country and our much vaunted civil rights shattered.
One of my best friends was having a party because her mother had to go out of town on business for a week. The party started around midnight. This, for once, was a farily innocent gathering of friends with no drinking or drug use planned. I won't say that it ended up that way. There was some minor drug use, but there were many at the party who were stone cold sober as well.
There were 12 of us at the party plus Wendy's little sister and two of her friends (who were in the 8th grade) It was not a big bash. It was not loud. At roughly 2:30 a.m. there was a knock on the door. It was a man claiming to be a lieutenant with the Sheriffs department. Behind him were several deputies who looked as if they were prepared for a riot. They were wearing bullet proof vest, helmets, and carrying shotguns. The lieutenant asked if the person who answered the door was Wendy N****. The girl replied that she was. The lieutenant asked if they could come inside. Wendy told them that they could not. The lieutenant then patted his shotgun and said, "Shut up and get inside. I'm older than you.". This was his "legal" reason for entering a house against the wishes of the people inhabiting it. The sheriffs came in. They poked around the place. The harassed us. They were rude and insulting. They kept asking us various questions along the lines of "where are the drugs.". Eventually, they found an empty marijuana pipe. This became their basis for separating us into separate rooms and interrogating us. They lied to us, telling each of us that some other had told them that the pipe was theirs.
When no one would claim ownership of the pipe, it became their excuse for arresting all us. They put us in handcuffs, read our rights, and put us into the backs of sheriffs cars. We were told by one deputy that they had been watching the house since 5:00 am, at that point nearly 24 hours. They did not bother to get a warrant. While they were driving us to the sheriffs station they ransacked Wendy's house. At the bottom of the trash, they found 4 empty wine cooler bottles. They later claimed that this was the reason that they had taken us into custody. The wine cooler bottles were several days old and had been Wendy's mother's. They actually tried to convince our parents that 15 kids were getting drunk on 4 wine coolers. Or, at least they tried to convince some of our parents that. From having talked to my friends about it in the weeks afterward, we realized that they gave several different stories to our parents. One of the stories that they gave out was that they had been tipped off about our party by an anonymous informant. This informant had told them that we were "the drug connection for the high schools". Under that version of the story, the sheriffs came into the house expecting to find multiple kilo bags of cocaine sitting around. Of course, one might wonder why they would jeopardize a big cocaine bust by not getting a warrant.
In spite of being one of the party attendees who was not sober, I was not so out of it to see that the police were trying to intimidate and harass us because they had no legal basis for holding us. They started making ridiculous demands of us, such as: 1. We would write a report on alcohol and drugs (yeah!) 2. We would bring them our report cards for the rest of the year. (uh huh!) They seemed to take great joy in taunting Wendy's sister April and her friends who really were quite innocent in the whole affair.
What the sheriffs actually walked in on was several kids watching TV, eating McDonalds, and unfolding a bag of McDonald's game pieces. After 15 or 20 minutes, two of the deputies suggested that they just leave and leave us alone. It was just a couple of minutes after that when one of the deputies found the pipe. I am convinced that the reason they treated us so poorly that night was out of anger that they had been duped by their 'anonymous informant'.