A woman was “arrested” on Thursday, March 30, by two obliging officers who, in the spirit of public service, community journalism, and public awareness, pulled her over on the side of a quiet country road in Rochester, cuffed her, and hauled her butt into the station after a short ride in the backseat of a cruiser.
According to the police report written by Officer Sean Crook, “…At approximately 1200 hours, I assisted Officer [Robert] Nordahl on a motor vehicle stop in the area of 38 Deerfield Terrace…. Officer Nordahl subsequently arrested the operator, Jean Perry … for operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license. Officer Nordahl placed Perry into handcuffs and transported her back to the Rochester Police Department for processing. I followed Officer Nordahl … and conducted the booking process. Perry was checked by matron Knight and subsequently placed into Cell 1, pending transport to Wareham District Court.”
By now, the reader has likely noticed that the “arrestee” is also the author, who will now attempt the smoothest transition possible from third-person narrative to first-person.
This statement is now false: I’ve never been arrested. The following statement is 100 percent true: I have experienced the mortification of being handcuffed by police on the side of the road and witnessed by the probing eyes of a passing UPS driver. Also true, I have felt the wrist-skin-pinching steel of handcuffs being crushed by my own back against the hard plastic seats of a police cruiser – and I did it all for you.
Ever scrolled through your Facebook feed to see a friend’s ‘cut and paste’ post about checking off a bucket list of life experiences? Things like, have you ever climbed a mountain, seen someone give birth, seen someone die, saved someone’s life, lived in a hut in the jungle, participated in a Cuban voodoo ceremony, ridden through the Andes mountains in the back of an open air truck like a farm animal.… Reading through the various lists, I could see myself saying yes to almost everything on them, or possibly saying yes to a couple in the near future. But the one, ‘have you ever been arrested’ was one I couldn’t say yes to, and likely never would, and on some irrational level, it bothered me.
The average person must watch at least one arrest on TV every day – whether fictional or on the news – but what does it feel like to be arrested? What’s it like to be powerless and under the control of a law enforcement officer, taken away from your vehicle and brought to the police station? What happens next? What’s going on outside while I’m inside a holding cell? How long is this going to take? I really wanted to find all that out.
On Thursday, March 23, I met with Rochester Police Chief Paul Magee at the station. Sure, my request was a strange one, but the chief reassured me that it wasn’t crazy at all. In fact, he liked the idea of staging a mock arrest to describe to readers the process and what it’s like to people who have never experienced it.
I signed a waiver. We scheduled a date and time. Thursday, March 30, at noon. I was to drive down Mary’s Pond Road and take a left onto Deerfield Terrace and somewhere along the route a cruiser would be waiting to pull me over. It was a legit scenario. And when I passed that cop car and he turned out behind me, followed me turning left onto Deerfield and flashed his lights, adrenalin was pulsing through my veins.
Officer Nordahl approached my window, followed by Officer Crook who arrived right behind him. I was nervous, and so was my photographer Colin (who has also never been arrested). We played out the fictional arrest like actors on a slightly awkward stage.
With the pretend ‘suspended license’ return on my name, Officer Nordahl asked me to step out of the vehicle, put my hands behind my back, and thus began the adventure of getting arrested.
It was a calm, cooperative arrest. No resistance from me. The officers were professional and as courteous as possible, which, I presume, is how most people would want their first arrest experience to be like. After a quick general pat-down, the officer assisted me into the backseat of the cruiser, extended the obligatory hand-guiding of the head so as not to bump it, and we drove towards Dexter Lane, into the ‘authorized vehicles only’ entrance at the station and then slowly into sally port A to be securely unloaded and ushered into the booking room.
The sally port was like a cave. It was instantly nighttime beneath synthetic streetlamp lighting, almost. I had a sense that for a police officer, given a different, perhaps more threatening offender to unload, it could be a few tense moments to pass through.
The booking room is a bright, basic, white cement block room with a fingerprinting machine, a wooden bench, and a cubicle behind which the booking officer stands at a computer to enter the offender’s information.
My left hand is shackled to the bench and the officer stands before me, reading me the Miranda Warning slowly and calmly. I sign my name acknowledging my understanding of my rights and then I answer a series of questions that Crook emphasizes are not “joke questions.”
Have you consumed any alcohol today? Do you feel hopeless? Do you want to harm yourself? Are you suicidal? No, no, no, and no. There were other questions, (of course, with a shackled wrist and no pen and pad to note them all down), but this gave the officer an idea as to whether or not I might try to hurt myself in the cell. I surrendered my belongings, my jewelry (except for my nose ring, which would have had to come out were I truly being arrested, but not worth the pain for a fictitious arrest), and my boots.
Fingerprinting was tedious, awkward, and required my full cooperation. I was amazed at how something so mundane as a series of fingerprints at a police station could appear as an intricate, delicate artwork, black swirls and white sways inside squares. As Nordahl controlled the movement of my fingers, I learned to bend and twist along with him, getting better at it with each following fingerprint.
And of course, there were the arrest photos. Like the other shots Colin took of me, it was hard keeping a serious, stoic face throughout. But I think I managed to look rather unpleased and with a little “attitude” as Crook described my facial expression.
Matron on duty Patricia Knight came in to give me a more thorough, matter-of-fact pat down and body search. She found nothing, of course, and I was led into the holding cell for about 15 minutes of captive contemplation.
Cold, hard, but pretty darn clean (smelling of cleaning solution), the holding cell was about 4 by 8 feet, containing only a solid wooden bed (no mattress) attached to the floor, and a stainless steel toilet with a small airplane bathroom-type stainless steel sink mounted behind it. With cameras aimed from more than one angle, I didn’t use the toilet. I sat, alone, with a gray, recycled, wool army-style blanket as my only comfort, aside from the reassurance that I would be released in only a short while, my arrest record wiped from the record, and my belongings returned to me.
No bail, no arraignment, no having to explain to my employer, family and friends where I was all afternoon.
“How’d it go? Did the prisoner give you any trouble?” the chief asked, poking his head in after I was released from the cell. I was a model detainee, one of the officers told him. And, of course, I returned the compliment, saying I was impressed with the poised professionalism of some of Rochester’s finest.
On my way home, I thought, I’m lucky to have been brought up in a decent family (and a cop’s daughter, to boot), and thankful that I’ve managed to avoid any trouble with the law during my life. I’m excited to be in a unique position where it’s possible to opt into my “arrest” so that I can experience it, write about it, laugh at the photographs, and have fun with it without lasting consequences. But it is a humbling experience, nonetheless.
I think now, should that bucket list come ’round Facebook again, I could check off “been arrested” and move on over to skydiving or something else I haven’t done. But for now, all I keep thinking is, I hope the UPS driver is reading this.
By Jean Perry
Glad this was not real.