Encounters with "the Fuzz"

Christy made me do it. She brought home this amazing flower arrangement from her class and told me she would only post pictures of it after I took my turn blogging. So I am now officially going to take "my turn."

I am currently doing my externship at Fillmore Spencer LLC working under Randy Spencer. It hasn't been much like I thought it would be, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, I've been working on and off with a case addressing the constitutionally permissible scope of law enforcement searches (4th Amendment stuff). Well, somehow that led me to reminisce about all the wonderful experiences I've had with police officers - except that they weren't very wonderful. I thought I'd share the two most interesting ones:

When I was in my early teens (or pre-teens perhaps), we had a decent Utah rainstorm. And once the rain stopped, the gutters were free flowing rivers. Rivers that deserved to be stopped. I had blocked off the rivers before with gutter debris, but those dams were puny and insignificant. This one was going to be epic. (You can pretend this picture is me with my childhood dreams)


I recruited Spencer and/or Amber (my little bro and sis) and we went to work stopping the flow - quite successfully. We were so successful that our dam extended beyond the gutter onto the street two or three feet. Not too bad really. But as you might have guessed from my intro, the cops didn't think our creativity ought to be allowed and one lone officer ordered us to shut down operations. Isn't that the type of crime that we need to fight off?

My second "interesting" experience with the cops happened after a nightly game of neighborhood laser tag.

My friends and I would take vests and guns like these and would run around the neighborhood shooting each other. A harmless childhood game.

Well, we had just finished a game and were in my driveway when suddenly all we could see was light - headlights to be specific. And before long, a cop was shouting at us to put down our weapons and stand against his patrol car with our hands on the car - prepared to be frisked. I'm sure he realized his mistake when we all put down fake guns, but he still frisked us to be sure. I guess some neighbor called in some people with guns in front of her house. I've always wondered who it was, but I suppose I'll never know.

So, there's a sampling of my pre-law school experiences with the law (of sorts). It's interesting that the cops only caught me when I wasn't actually doing anything bad. Then again, I guess I should be thankful for that.