I made the police pay me $22.
Many, many years ago my ex-gf gave me two tickets to go and see A Midsummer Night's Dream (it's a play by some fellow called will Shakespeare) being done by a famous and with-it modern company. I don't exactly know why she gave me these tickets, apart from the fact that she got them for free from her ex-bf whose father ran the festival the play formed part of. My then-gf did not wish to go (I suspect she was having secret liaisons with said ex-gf) so I went with a mate and took the gf's car.

It was fabulous. I had a single beer before, and a single scotch during interval. We headed homewards. Being an older Italian car, there were naturally gremlins with the electrics and it was for one of these that the constabulary pulled me over. The very polite older guy copper rumbled over his capacious belly-and-chin-set that he'd seen I had a tail-light out (the opposite one from that which I'd changed the week before, sigh) and in a friendly and jocular way said "well if we don't tell you, how would you know?" So no harm done, just a happy pair of coppers glad not to be dealing with some actual bad shit on a Saturday night. Needless to say, as with every pull-over, there's the old 'random' breath test. No problem, as the legal limit is 0.08 and given what and when I'd drunk I'd be lucky to max out at 0.02.

So the cheery, compact but curvy lady plod is holding the machine up almost suggestively while I blow through the straw, the machine beeps, and her heretofore sunny and chatty demeanour suddenly shifts, just a tad, to the right.

"I'm going to ask you to do that again, OK?" OK, then, so repeat procedure....beep....and....demenour level now degraded to 'standard system response only' level, as "I'm going to ask you please to accompany us to the station now."
"Why? What does it (the machine) say?"
"I can't tell you that."

I know full well how pointless argument is at this point, but we have a quandary. My mate has no licence. Nor can he actually drive, he being one of those rare blokes who made it all the way past 30 without ever seeing the need. We are far from home, and public transport is not an option. He will have to get a taxi home. This sucks, because taxis are expensive and both he and I are studenty types (well, a poet and underemployed musician respectively in truth) so are permanently broke. Sigh again.

My journey to the central city lock-up is enlightening, as I'd never seen the inside of a paddy wagon up close, and given the shiny hose-out interior, the hard steel 'seating', the lack of seatbelts and the driving style of your average copper I can see how so many folks are 'accidentally' injured while resisting arrest from inside their cage. The coppers are now completely chatless, cold, professionally detached.

I share the holding room with two prostitutes who were not good conversationalists (no speaking English) and a fellow extremely happy with himself and the world and showing it by rubbing himself all over and caressing the corners of the walls with his cheek, like a cat. He was an amazing chat, and was in there for the second time that night, following a drink-driving charge, release, and then an arrest for "a little bit of everything [giggle]".

Eventually I am ushered in to the room where the high-tech desk-mounted breathalyser equipment resides, the one they need to use for court purposes. At each point of handover from officer to officer I am asked if I have any complaints about my treatment thus far. I ensure them that they are all fine exemplars of their trade apart from the fact that their machine is clearly fucking wrong. I may not have said fucking, actually.

Back-timed to the time of incident, according to the Big Brother machine, my true reading would have been approximately 0.01. I hardly register a whiff right now. At this point I calmly ask why the fuck I am there. I do say fuck for sure this time. There is the slightest intimation of a shrug in response, with the merest millimetre-measure crinkle of wryness at the corners of eye and mouth. Not so's the cameras could detect.

Curvy blonde demeanour champion is bouncily back at news of this, and forestalls my next peeved question by announcing that they're heading back to the "vicinity of your vehicle" - her words exactly - and they could give me a ride. I could wait through....here....in the garage, with the van.

Also in the unlocked garage with the unlocked van is a small collection of police equipment such as batons, spare radios, flashlights, shotguns.....on a wee rack. Yes indeedy, a pair of riot guns. Right next door to Mr Happy Wall Crawler who is now having some lightning flashes of screaming regret and terror, and an unlocked door between us. Opening the passenger door of the van I see donuts. Yes, donuts. I couldn't believe it either. Where do you get donuts in a city like this - hardly donut capital of the world - at midnight?? The police clearly have Secret Powers we can only guess at. I didn't eat one, in case I got caught.

Now's when I wished the cops would please revert to type and shut up because I have to start answering chatty questions for the 15 minute ride back like "oh, is that the play with the fairies in?" and "do you follow the cricket? I follow the cricket, what did you think of that...(insert random cricket thing here)".

When I finally got an answer to *my* question about wtf was I doing in lock-up, ms. smiley chirper just said "Some of our equipment's really old and doesn't work properly all the time. We don't have the budget to get the new stuff."

The car was fine, thanks for asking. Big guy reminded me about the taillight and apart from the absence of my mate it was like groundhog day 2 hours earlier.

I sent a letter explaining the situation and expressing my displeasure at having to "pay for my friend's taxi ride due to police incompetence." etc etc. No response. But to shorten this already stupidly-long anecdote, I kept at it, and eventually after a few half-hearted suggestions from different bureauplods about compensation forms, appeals, court appearances and one particularly nicely-penned one of mine on the subject of what some of my friends in the press have suggested....came a cheque, 8 months later, for the exact amount on the copy of the (forged) taxi receipt I'd sent them. No note. End of story.

Imagine apologizing for length in a court of law. Or a bawdy house.
(dadadali has hybrid vigour, Sat 19 Jun 2010, 5:22, Reply)