Reply #329: I can empathize with his stance

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Having had a SO who was put in a similar situation, I agree that some things should be questioned.

My story:

My SO took our vehicle, which was registered in both our names, and went to see a friend in the hospital that had just been in a vehicle accident.

He was shaken by the fact that our friend was in the hospital with broken vertebra in his neck and in a hurry to get in to find out how his condition was and made two mistakes which landed him in jail. He locked the keys in the car and forgot his wallet in the console of said vehicle.

When he left the hospital that night he discovered his error in leaving the keys in the car and proceeded to call me and ask that I come bring him the spare set. It took me an hour to get there as I was out of town. When I arrived I was able to find the vehicle but my SO was missing. I tried to call him on his cell and kept getting the voice mail. I checked in the hospital and at the nearby convenience stores to no avail. After two hours of searching I called the police. It was another 1.75 hours later that I finally found out my SO had been taken to jail for not having a valid from of ID on him. And it wasn't even the police who were able to give me this information, but my SO.

The police had come up to him while he was at the car in the parking garage and asked what he was doing standing there leaning on the car. He told them he'd locked himself out of his car and that I was on my way to bring him a set of keys. They asked him for his ID which he went to provide for them only to realize that he'd locked it in the car also. He was able to peer in the window and see his wallet sitting there in the console, and pointed it out to the police. He gave them his name and address and again told them I should be along within the hour. They asked what he had been doing there in the first place and he told them of the friend in the hospital and that he'd been shaken and obviously screwed up and locked the car without making sure he had his things on his person.

They ran the car and said it did come back to being registered to the person he was claiming to be. The then asked him to turn around and place his hands behind his back. When he questioned them on why they said because there's a law that says you must have valid ID on you at all times and since he did not they were going to have to take him down to the station. He tried to explain that I would be there shortly and then he could give them his ID and all would be well. They insisted on handcuffing him and taking him downtown.

Once they got him downtown they fingerprinted him and since he'd been arrested once on traffic warrants years ago his prints were in the system. I'm sure he never expected to be happy for that fact, but as things worked out he was. You see once they were able to prove it was him they believed that it was his wallet they could see in the vehicle and let him go. Which brought about a whole new problem, he was 3 miles from where his car was and his cell phone battery was dead from my repeated calls and voice messages. They refused to return him or to even call him a cab or let him use the phone. They let him out the main door and were finished with him.

He walked back to his car in the middle of the night. He said all the while he was wondering if someone else had seen the wallet in the console and had broken into the car while the police were busy dealing with him, and what I must be thinking if I saw the car broken into.

Finally he shows up at the vehicle to find my friend that I had stationed there as a watch person waiting for him while I was out driving the area looking for a sign of him.

It was one horrible night for all of us that should never have happened in the first place.

He filed a complaint and last I had heard nothing ever came from it.