Wrongly Accused
My husband and I spent this past weekend in Mendocino County, enjoying wine country and a visit with friends in our first “get away” in 2 years since starting the house. Too bad the memory had to be spoiled like this.
This evening (Monday after), a Mendocino county sheriff contacted my husband Chris and accused us of leaving a restaurant in Mendocino county that same weekend without paying. In a town called Gualala, where we did not stop, at a restaurant The St. Orres, where we did not eat. The sheriff told us we must pay the $110 bill or face “arrest” and “criminal charges.” He did not regard our comments to the contrary as worth listening to, and instead cited that he had a “verified license” and an “eye witness” account against us. And he kept repeating statements to the effect that we looked very guilty, indeed.
It turned out that the sheriff got the facts wrong, and made incorrect assumptions about the report without checking. The manager of the restaurant–who contacted the sheriff–spotted Chris at a gas station 50 miles north the following day, thought he “looked like the guy,” wrote down the license plate number of our van, and then made a phone call to the sheriff saying that we had done this thing. When Chris asked if his car looked the same as that of the people who didn’t pay, the manager stated that he didn’t see the car of those people.
Of course, we only learned this after Chris called the manager and asked him “How did you come by this information?” Interesting that we didn’t learn this from the sheriff. The manager also told Chris that he never even saw me at the gas station. Also interesting that the sheriff told me that the manager identified both of us as “the couple” from our driver’s license photos. The officer assumed that the manager got our license plate # at the restaurant instead of a day later at a town 50 miles north. The officer also knew that the reservation was made by a woman named “Kim,” yet he didn’t think that was odd, nor did he think it noteworthy that a manager, and not a wait person, was the one to identify the people skipping out.
The sheriff assumed right from the start that we were guilty. He kept saying “eye witness identification.” The whole thing was very upsetting and was framed immediately by the deputy as “warrant for your arrest” and “criminal charges.” Even though no official report had yet been filled out. Of course we know about the reliability of eye witness ID.
It was pure luck that we got out of this because we happened to have a credit card charge for the same day/hour in a town 50 miles north that we could prove. It was at a hotel that we decided on a total lark to stay in. Otherwise, we’d be dealing with this for the next few days and be wrongfully accused, or more likely, out the price of someone else’s dinner.
My advice to you? Make sure you wear mis-matched clothing wherever you go (that way people will remember you), take pictures of people who see you (with time stamps), and geo-track your every step, because you never know when you might narrowly miss arrest, or have to pay $110 to get off the hook.
Wow. What an awful experience for you both, particularly given the infrequent nature of your vacations from the home building job,when you probably needed a peaceful break. Sorry it had to be marred by this. It’s too bad the general public (or the local law enforcement community) isn’t more familiar with the inaccuracies of eyewitness testimony. Glad you got off the hook!
WOW. I thought we live in the USA: Innocent till proven guilty. Can you file a complaint against the officer? Although from the sound of it, that might have repercussions of it’s own…
What a horrible nightmare! (And imagine the same story but being African American!
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Patricia that is CRAZY! Very disturbing. This is the first instance where I think a product like Google Latitude could be useful, as it keeps a GPS log of your movements and whereabouts (the intention is for your friends to know where you are). Pity there’s no Google tool for troublesome sheriffs. I HOPE YOU SHARED SOME OF YOUR THOUGHTS WITH HIM WHEN YOU WERE FOUND INNOCENT!!
Ugh. Let’s face it, “innocent until proven guilty” is a *legal* idea, not reality. The reality is that people are lazy and are stuck in their world-view. The world-view of cops is that 99% of people *are* guilty, and also that the guilty hardly ever say “You caught me, I’m guilty”. So lazy, unthinking cops just work harder to get confessions from people than they do to find out the truth.
Here’s an analogy. Inevitably, when I tell people that I ride a motorcycle, someone will say “Oh, those are dangerous. My works in a hospital, and he/she says that motorcyclists come in all the time with horrible injuries.” Well, *yeah*. They’re not walking into the local *hairstylist*, *are* they? If you’re in the medical profession, you’re gonna start taking the attitude that motorcycles are unsafe, because you see motorcycle injuries far more than the ordinary citizen, *and* (I’ll admit it) motorcycle injuries can be severe. But you’re *biased by your experiences*, just as a sheriff is biased to believe that all accusations are true.
Also, both groups have motivation to act on their biases. A sheriff looks good if he/she gets *convictions* (”we’re cleaning up this town!”) A doctor feels better, feels that he/she is preserving life, if he/she prevents someone from a horrific motorcycle injury.
It’s very unfair and very unfortunate that it costs the Sheriff nothing to arrest you, but it costs you tons of money to defend yourself in court.
Final thoughts: a) complain to someone. b) Don’t be fooled. The law enforcement community is *well aware* of the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. It’s something they don’t want others to find out. The best evidence is a confession, and you get confessions by suggesting you have eyewitnesses.
That sucks. Glad you had the other receipt. A lot of Barney Fife types in the Gualala sherriff’s department.
I’m so sorry this happened to you guys – you were needing some time away so badly – hopefully some of the good parts will resurface after the anger and frustration subsides a bit.
This so sucks!
And you guys are two of the most honest people I know!!!
Oh, that stinks! Maybe in a couple of years you can look back and laugh. Right now, however, that wasn’t exactly what you needed. I hope you still had a nice time. The weekend was lovely!
You know Nina, all I could think about was what it must be like to be a minority. This experience really brought that home. Imagine if it were an African American couple, or an Asian couple (do they all look alike to white people)? Chris was held without any indication of why by the police when he was in his 20s because a shop keeper said that a “long-haired hippy exposed himself to her.” So, Chris had long hair and the nabbed him. Wasn’t him. The cops didn’t even tell him why they detained him.
Yes! I just found out about Google Latitude. I feel like now I should just go around snapping pictures of everyone/everything and getting random “eye witness” accounts saying “you were here.” I figure this can be a tip for frustrated restaurant owners, or yet another angle on a possible scam: Don’t want your friends to pay their bill when they visit your restaurant? Just claim that some random stranger dined-and-dashed, get their license plate, and you can pretty much bet the sheriff will bully them into paying. I was pretty much resigned to paying this, because the sheriff gave me NO answer about what I could do to fight this, until I told him: “You guys deal with liars and cheats all the time, so I’m not surprised you think that I’m one, but it really sucks that I have to pay a bill that I did NOT incur.” After that, he backed down and said that I could file a report, but he immediately followed through with “good luck, since this guy got your license plate (remember this was under an incorrect assumption that he got the plate at the point of occurence).” Chris was the one who calmly followed through and asked the restaurant owner the key questions. Not the sheriff.
Thanks Curt. Yeah, all I could think of was “What if we had decided instead to stay at the camp ground? We’d be dealing with this bill for sure.”
NWA had it right. Office of citizen complaints should be the first order of business. Happy to serve as your eyewitness to the fact that the cop was on crack.
Yikes, Patricia! What an upsetting situation – you guys certainly don’t deserve that! However, it sounds like you and Chris can have some fun reporting that sheriff to his superiors for doing such a poor job. If I were you, I would tell the sheriff that you plan to do so and suggest to him that he might want to go talk that restaurant manager into withdrawing his complaint since the information he provided was bogus. I make this recommendation because of a situation I got into in Oakland years ago.*
Best of luck getting a decent resolution on this. At the very least, that manager should have to buy you an Amazon gift certificate or something for your inconvenience…
* The Oakland cop story:
When I was a young long-hair hanging out with other long-haired folk, a cop stopped my VW for a past-due registration. He made some rude and improper remarks about how I probably had lots of outstanding tickets because I was a hippie which I considered harassing behavior. When he returned from “checking me out” (no outstanding tickets, by the way), I had gathered a paper and pencil and made a show of taking down his badge number. All of a sudden he started being conciliatory and took a completely different tone. A few days later, I went down to the Internal Affairs Office of the OPD to make a formal complaint about his behavior. As I was telling my story, another officer walked in and asked the officer I was talking to, “What’s this one about?”, and the officer said something like, “It’s Charlie, again.” Turned out the nasty copy was burning out and was under investigation by IA. I left it in their hands to do the right thing.
Damn, I’m sorry. What an unpleasant ending to a getaway.
“However, it sounds like you and Chris can have some fun reporting that sheriff to his superiors for doing such a poor job. ”
I serioiusly don’t recommend that. Sheriff is very probably an elected position and getting a sheriff mad at you is a recipe for pain — in practice, he reports mainly to the voters. See the current events with Sheriff Arpaio in Maricopa County, Arizona.
Argh. Typo. “seriously”.