This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: Calling In Your Own Arrest
The right to silence is the single most underused right in the whole justice system. It costs nothing and requires no paperwork. It does not need to be argued in front of a judge. All it asks is that you close your mouth, and yet week after week I read police reports where somebody has decided that this is the one moment in life to be forthcoming.
A few weeks ago in this space I wrote about people who were caught out by their own gadgets, the AirPods and AirTags that kept broadcasting after their owners would have preferred a little discretion. This week the humans decided they did not want to be outdone by their electronics. Four people, in four places, handed the police everything they needed. One of them used the emergency line to do it. Before we start, the usual reminder with a British Columbia flavour. If you are lawfully stopped and an officer makes a valid demand for a breath sample, you have to provide it. That part is not optional and refusing carries its own penalties. What is optional is the running commentary. Nobody has ever been charged with failing to explain their evening. With that distinction firmly in mind, let us begin.
The Trucker Who Requested His Own Arrest
Our first story comes from Pennsylvania, and it is the one that lands closest to my practice.
On April 29, Pennsylvania State Police dispatch received a call about a maroon tractor trailer travelling on Route 28 near Punxsutawney. A witness reported that the truck was driving erratically and creeping along at roughly five miles per hour, which is a speed that raises questions on any highway. The caller was worried it would cause a crash.
Within minutes, a second call came in about the same truck. This one was from the driver.
He told troopers that he was “high on cocaine and methamphetamine” and that he needed to be arrested. Troopers, being accommodating people, obliged. He was cited for possession and driving under the influence. Police did not release his name and described him only as a fifty year old man from Gouldsboro.
What I find remarkable is not that he was impaired. I read about impaired drivers every working day. It is that a witness had already called, so the police were coming regardless, and he still picked up the phone to make sure they had a full confession waiting for them when they arrived. The report does not explain what prompted the call. I have theories, and none of them involve a lawyer.
I will say this in his favour. Five miles per hour is not a speed at which you hurt very many people, and he took himself off the road. That is more than a lot of impaired drivers manage. It is the only compliment available here, so I am giving it.
Doing 108 Because of Love Island
Our second story is from Arizona, where a highway patrol trooper clocked a driver on State Route 347 doing 108 miles per hour in a 65 zone. That is not a lead foot. That is nearly double the posted limit.
The trooper asked the obvious question, which is what most of us would want to know. The driver explained that she was rushing home to watch “Love Island”.
She was arrested and booked for criminal speeding and reckless driving, and her vehicle was impounded for twenty days, which Arizona officials cheerfully describe as sending the car to “car jail.” The incident happened on June 9 in Pinal County.
Here is my professional observation. There is no version of that answer that helps. “I was not paying attention” is unhelpful but harmless. “I did not realize how fast I was going” is at least an argument. Telling a trooper that you knowingly chose speed over safety, and that the reason was a reality television programme about people in swimwear, converts a speeding ticket into an admission of deliberate risk. That is exactly the sort of thing that turns a fine into a criminal charge.
Also, and I say this gently, the show would have been there later. It is a recorded broadcast. Twenty days without a car is a long time to wait for an episode that was never going anywhere.
The Pocket Dial That Said One Word
Our third story comes from Wilmington, North Carolina, and it is the most technically interesting of the group.
A warrant issued in New Hanover County charges Jahzail Shamon Grady, 19, with two felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, felony conspiracy, and a misdemeanour count of discharging a firearm in the city. Authorities allege that on May 31 he and two others got into a blue Acura, and that at some point in that vehicle, Grady accidentally called 911 from his cellphone.
The line stayed open. The recording captured him saying one word: “Vesta.” Authorities say it sounded as though the group was driving to the Vesta Village neighbourhood.
From there the case assembled itself. Camera footage in Vesta Village showed the vehicle entering the area and parking. Gunfire followed, detected by a ShotSpotter system. And the path of the car happened to line up with the location data from the ankle monitor that Grady was already wearing.
That last detail is the one that stops me. A pocket dial to 911, a neighbourhood camera, an acoustic gunshot detector, and a court ordered ankle bracelet, all telling the same story from four different directions. Twenty years ago that file looks entirely different. Today the evidence more or less collects itself, and the only human contribution required was a phone in a pocket and a single spoken word.
Two Hundred and Eighty Two Phone Calls
Our fourth story is the freshest, and the strangest. It happened in Colorado Springs on Sunday, August 16.
Police were called to a residence on Shane Circle in the morning. Investigating, they connected it to a burglary complaint, in which a man had allegedly entered his brother’s room without permission and taken a camera. So far this is an ordinary and rather sad family matter.
Officers were called back to the same address later that day. This time, according to police, the man was attempting to “break 911” by calling it repeatedly. He got to 282 calls over the course of the day.
I want to pause on the strategy. If your day already includes a burglary complaint with your name attached to it, the last thing you want is a reason for police to come back. Dialling the emergency line 282 times is a fairly efficient way to guarantee they will. He then refused to come outside, officers set up containment, attempted to talk him out peacefully, and eventually entered the residence with the help of a drone unit. David Ancell, 41, was arrested and held on a ten thousand dollar bond on a felony burglary allegation.
He did not break 911. He broke the only day he had in which nobody was standing at his door.
One More, Bolted to the Front Bumper
I will finish with a variation, because not every confession is spoken out loud. Sometimes it is mounted to your vehicle.
On Saturday, August 8, an Arizona DPS trooper stopped a pickup truck on Route 66 near Flagstaff for a broken taillight. The trooper reported immediately noticing signs of impairment, and the driver admitted to drinking and driving. A blood test later came back at roughly two and a half times the legal limit. The driver has not been publicly identified.
On the front of the truck was a vanity plate. It read “ARRIVE ALIVE”, and around the border it carried the slogan “Drive sober: or get pulled over.”
DPS summed it up in five words that I could not improve on: “A lesson in practice what you preach.”
I have seen a great many aggravating factors in impaired driving files. I had not previously seen one that the driver paid a licensing fee to bolt onto the front of their own truck.
The Takeaway
There is a thread running through all of this, and it is not simply that people say foolish things when they are nervous. It is that in every one of these cases, the state already had, or was about to have, most of what it needed. A witness had called about the truck. A trooper already had the radar reading. Cameras, ShotSpotter and an ankle monitor had already mapped the Acura. Police were already investigating the burglary.
The extra information changed nothing about whether these people would be caught. It changed what the Crown, or the prosecutor, could prove and how easily. A speeding ticket became reckless driving. An impaired driving investigation arrived pre confessed. That is the actual cost of talking. Not that it gets you caught, but that it removes every argument your lawyer might otherwise have made on your behalf.
The right to silence is not about being difficult or having something to hide. It is a recognition that the moment you are stopped by police is the worst possible moment to be composing explanations. You are startled, you may be impaired, and you are talking to someone who is writing it all down.
Be polite. Provide the sample when it is lawfully demanded. Then say very little, and call a lawyer.
See you next week, and please do not phone this one in.
