Armchair Anonymous: Arrested

0:00Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. Hi. Today's prompt was, tell us about a time you got arrested. Tell us. Tell us. Tell us everything. He's grown in intensity. The last one's absolutely one of the craziest stories I've ever heard. Oh, wow. Right? Yeah. Wow. We heard a crazy, there's a crazy one on here. Oh, these are good. Yeah, these are good.

0:40Please enjoy Stories About Being Arrested.

1:04Hi. How are you? I'm great. Okay. So what name do we want to go with? Okay. I have one locked and loaded. I think we're going to go with Jackie. The reason is Jackie was the name on my first fake ID that I had. And although this story doesn't involve my fake ID, it does involve underage drinking. Where are you, Jackie? Jackie is just outside of Toronto, Canada. Do you go up to Muskoka in the summer ever? Dax, I really hoped you would ask me about this because I always hear you talking about Muskoka. I'm here to tell you there's a better, more well-kept secret cottage country in Ontario. It is the Kawarthas.

1:40It is cooler. It is more down to earth. It is less bougie. And that's where you go. And that's where I'm going this weekend. Oh, wonderful. And is it a shorter distance from Toronto? Because it's a good hike to Muskoka. Yeah. Not necessarily. I might be biased, but I think it's better. Yeah. Yeah. I feel you. We trust you. We're not on a bougie lake. I like a non bougie lake. Okay. So you were arrested, presumably. I was arrested. Yes. So let's get into it. The year was 2008 and it was fall of my grade 12 year of high school. I actually have a very late birthday. So I was actually 16, about to turn 17 at this point.

2:16The other two people featured in this story were 17 at the time. So we go to your typical high school house party. This house party was interesting, actually, because a girl from our high school class, her mom had just bought this really big house but hadn't moved into it yet so it was a bunch of teenagers partying in an empty house i'm so scared and someone's new house yeah someone's new house yeah party goes on drink drink drink fun fun fun party party night ends and myself my high school boyfriend and his friend we decide we're going to take a cab home from this party to my boyfriend's house i looked it up for this, it was like a three kilometer cab ride probably would have taken 30, 35 minutes to walk.

3:01This is well past midnight. It's fall. It's cold. I'm already proud of you guys. You didn't choose to drive. Also, that's 1.8 miles for non-kilometer people. I remember it was a minivan cab. So I get in, I'm sitting behind the cab driver. My boyfriend is sitting in the back seat next to me. And then his friend is sitting in the front seat next to him. The cab pulls out of the driveway and the The doors lock and the cab driver goes, you need to pay me$200 cash right now or I'm driving you to the police station and turning you in for underage drinking. Blackmail right out of the gates? That feels illegal.

3:37The house is in sight. I'm like, look, we've got whatever amount of cash. It was probably like$40 between us. I'm like, we'll give you this. Please just let us off. We'll find another way home. The whole ride probably would have been max of$15 cab fare. He child locks the doors and starts driving away. Oh my goodness. This is kidnapping. In this country, he's committed two felonies, which is blackmail and now abduction. I realized that the friend sitting in the front seat, his door couldn't have been child locked, but it's a moving vehicle. And we pull out of this suburban street onto a really main road where on this road you can be going like 70, 80 kilometers an hour.

4:16And I'm pulling on the door. My boyfriend is pulling on the door on that side. And we're like, let us out. It's escalating into panic. So we get to a red light at a main intersection between two very big roads. Still, it's just escalating. I feel like now is a good time to pause and say, logically, I have very chill parents, great relationship with them. I think the other two did as well. What probably would have been the right move was to say, drive us to the police station. Our parents will come pick us up. Of course. And also, he's not going to do that. You still could have gotten arrested, though, or an MIP.

4:52They probably would have just called our parents. And the old prefrontal cortex is not fully there yet. So instead, we choose to panic. So we're at a red light. I'm pulling on the van door. And suddenly I hear my boyfriend and his friend say, one, two, three. And I look and they start beating up the cab driver. Sure, sure, sure. This is a decision I probably would have made. I keep pulling on the door. I'm freaking out. Eventually the door unlocks. So we scatter. I run across the four lanes of this big road. It's late at night. There's no cars there. And I kind of run into like a park ravine type area where there is a path that leads up to my neighborhood.

5:33So I call my older brother. I give him the shortest version of what just happened. I say, you have to come pick me up. And he's like, walk calmly. Don't draw attention to yourself. Just walk home. I'll meet you. So I'm walking around the corner, walking down this street next to ours, and my brother pulls up. I'm about to get in his car, and a cop car pulls up behind us. The one detail I really don't remember is what initially they said to me. If they said, were you at a party? Were you in a cab? But next thing I know, I am up against my brother's car, and they're saying, you're under arrest. Hands in cuffs.

6:07He just says, okay, I'm going to go home. I'm going to wake up mom and dad. Just be calm. Immediately, I'm in the back of the cop car. It's two male cops. And I remember they just started asking me questions. And it never occurred to me for even a second that I didn't have to say anything. I know. Oh, I'm sure, sure. I would not think that in the moment either. It's like you're in handcuffs. So you feel like you have to answer them. They've got questions. I've got answers. And it's just like, who were you with? What's your name? What's his name? What's his middle name? What's his birthday? What was the address?

6:38Everything. And I'm just word vomit. You rolled over on everyone. I did. I was a snitch and I was hysterically crying. And so they drive me to the police station, very close car ride from my parents' house. This police station was across the street from our high school, by the way. So they put us in an underground parking garage and the two cops get out and I'm sitting there in the backseat in handcuffs. And I managed somehow to shimmy my little pink Motorola Razr flip phone out of my pocket. And I just text my friend, we'll call her Allison and I just say, I'm arrested. I don't know what I was trying to do with that.

7:20I'm assuming Allison wasn't a lawyer. No, Allison was 17. They put us in a questioning room and my parents are there and they're just asking me questions and getting me to run through the story. I can't stress to you enough how much I am hysterically crying. And I remember I kept retelling the story and I would say like, and then the cops and one or both of my parents would just jump in and be like, police officers, They were so intent on making sure that I came across respectfully. And this goes on for hours. So I guess what had ended up happening was the cab driver told the police that teenagers had gotten in his car and he was going to drive them home.

7:58And then they threatened him that they were going to take all the cash that he had. Of course, the guy's already a fucking scumbag. And that the teenagers had beat him up and he had$1 ,000 in his front pocket and that they had stolen the$1 ,000 from his front pocket. This is pre-Rideshare. So this was the only cab company around and they had a reputation for not being the greatest. Eventually, they pull my parents to another room and they're like, look, this could have ended really differently. Thank goodness everyone's under 18. Your daughter was in the wrong place at the wrong time. we're going to let her go without any charges, but you got to button this down.

8:37And they've taken a written statement. We go home and I remember just being like so thirsty. And my mom was like, you've just been bawling your eyes out for six hours straight. What ended up happening, I was fine. No charges against me. The other two, probably thanks to me and my word vomit in part, ended up going to court where in court, they read the written statement that they had taken at the police station. And there literally was like, and then we were in the cab, sobbing break. And then we were pulling on the door, sobbing break. They ended up getting, I believe, a year probation, community service and court imposed curfew.

9:19As for my parents, they were just like, maybe we just do like an 11 p.m. curfew and cool it on this boyfriend. Wow. Wow. Wow. In the cab driver, everything's groovy with him. He doesn't have to deal with anything? I honestly don't know if he ever got charged with anything. I know that very quickly they were like, buddy, nothing got stolen from you. No one makes a thousand dollars in this town. I mean, isn't that illegal too to like lie? False statement. Yeah, this guy's got like three felonies. What's interesting is my husband, there's a few people in his family that are police officers. And I've since recounted this story to them.

9:53And they're like, there are so many parts of that story that it's just like not how that should have gone down at all. But that's how it was. Oh, man. scary. Now, am I right in that Canada is definitely looser about younger people drinking? I mean, the drinking age, at least when I was growing up, was 19. Is it still 19? Yeah. So it's 19 in Ontario. So we were just shy of that. I've never in my life known anyone who got any sort of charge for being caught drinking underage. It's really just at worst, maybe the drunk tank. So what would have made so much sense is I just say, take me to the police station and my parents would have come and picked me up.

10:29And I reached out to both my parents to validate some details on this story. And my mom immediately was like, you weren't arrested. You were just brought to the station for questioning. And I was like, mom, when they put me in cuffs in the back of the car and said you're arrested, I was arrested. Yeah, I'd go along with that. I mean, I don't know the technical definition, but yeah, you were arrested and then let go. Arrested, not charged. They said you're under arrest. So that was me under arrest. Oh, what a harrowing story for a 16-year-old. I will say to this day, I don't love a cab. When Rideshare came along and it was like, you can track where you're going, who you're with, all the safety features.

11:07I was for that. So I can't say I'm totally unscathed. It's kind of still there. But yeah, it's a story now. And how long did you stay with the boyfriend? Oh, that ended pretty quickly. Was he a bad boy? He wasn't the greatest. Okay, okay. He wasn't a good boy. We might have to spank his butt chair. Well, I don't know. Oh, well, Jackie, thank you. Thank you so much. This has been so much fun. I have to say, I was watching the first episode of Mom's Car on YouTube when I got the email from Emma. Oh, what'd you think? I loved the episode, but my brain kind of short circuited when I was like watching you and then reading the email from Emma.

11:45It was like a lot of armchair coming at me at once. That's Sim. Sim. All right. Well, lovely meeting you. Thank you. Lovely meeting you too. All right. Take care. Have fun at the lake. Thanks. Bye. Is this David? It is. David, you've got an Uncle Baby Billy shirt on. I do. I got a Misbehaving Tour shirt on. Oh, my God. That's fantastic. It kind of fits well with the theme of this story. Oh, good. Where are you, David? I'm in West Seattle, but I'm calling from a co-work space because we are in the middle of moving today. Oh, okay. There are some hints to your location behind you because that definitely looks like a Washington seascape.

12:25Nice little generic co-workspace art. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when does this event happen? So this event took place in the 90s, 1998, when I was a junior in high school. Back to the 90s. Okay, so I'm a bit older than you. I miss it. Yeah, six years, I would guess. About, yeah. And did you go to school in Washington? Yeah, I grew up in the suburb of Seattle, Issaquah, which is ironically where we're moving back to. Oh, wow, crazy. So it's a Sunday afternoon. Amy and my buddy were palling around in his truck, you know, as teenage boys will do, up to no good. and this car pulled up right behind us and started just tailgating us, or at least so we thought.

12:59Yes, yes. As teenage boys on a Sunday afternoon will do, we start thinking, what can we do to get this person? Should we break check them? Should we throw something out the window? Carl was my best friend at the time, still is a really good friend of mine. He was the driver, looked in his glove compartment, and he had a toy, a cap gun or pistol. Okay. Yep. Okay. What would we do? Of course, they're like, oh, I should hold Carl hostage. Oh. Oh, interesting. Not the direction I was expecting it to go. I grabbed the gun and I hold it to Carl's head and we can look out the back window and he's looking in the mirror and the person is clearly responding, right?

13:35They're kind of freaking out. They're concerned. Yeah. And we're getting a good laugh out of it. So we're still driving through town and we're like, well, now what are we going to do? And we cruise over to a future shop, which is kind of like a best buy. Now they're out of business. And one of our buddies was the manager of the car stereo install bay. We pulled up over there. We thought, okay, prank's done. moving on with our day, still trying to find something to do. And we go in and we tell him what the story was. He pulls some of the guys out and tells them what the story is. You're heroes.

14:03Yeah, we think it's the best thing in the world. About five minutes later, one of the clerks comes up and goes, there's a lot of police outside. Oh, but a lot. Yeah, a lot for a murder, I would assume. Or an armed robbery. Both require a lot. Issaquah is a pretty small suburb. There's probably four squad cars in the whole town. So it was all four of them, plus a couple from a neighboring town, Bellevue. There's probably six or seven of them out there. And we go up to the window. We're looking out the window. We're like, uh-oh. My buddy, who's the manager of the store, is freaking out. He's like, I'm going to get in trouble if the cops storm in here.

14:35And there's a whole scene. He's like, you guys got to go. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Okay. We get in the car and we start driving. And then they are clearly following us. They're not engaging, but they are following to see what our next location or destination is going to be. we kind of keep traveling through town and we get out through downtown towards where there's a park and ride and this is you know lights on we're surrounded and they are steering us to pull in and really quick when you're driving down the road what are you guys saying are you trying to come up with some cockamamie story you're going to tell them what's the dialogue inside yeah i don't think we were that smart to think of anything besides just we're dumb boys yeah like oops this is the 90s so we were going to go with the good old simpsons boys will be boys defense okay okay It was probably our first endeavor with the law, but it wasn't our first endeavor of getting in trouble.

15:21And it worked in the past, just endeavor with law enforcement. So we were going to try it out and see how it went.

15:43so we pull into the park and ride and they surround us and we are facing a concrete barrier so we can't go anywhere doors open their guns are drawn lights are on there's somebody on a pole horn giving instructions. So both of our hands are out the window at this point because we had the windows down. They instruct Carl to turn the car off and throw the keys out the window. Now, Carl's a fit guy. I wouldn't call him athletic in any means, but he hugged those keys, had to have been half a mile across the parking lot. They instruct him to open the door from the outside and step out. So he reaches out, follows instructions, gets out and is outside.

16:18And they have his hands up and they say, take 10 steps back and then take five more steps back. And They keep instructing him to take steps backwards till they get close enough to him. Then they put him in handcuffs and put him in the back of a car. At this point, they don't know who's who or what's going on. Now the attention kind of turns to me. I've got my hands out the window and they say, passenger, slide across the seat because it's a 90s model Ford Ranger pickup truck and get out the driver's side because that's kind of where they were all able to contain us so we couldn't take off running as if that was a choice.

16:47So I've got my seatbelt on, of course, as I should. and I'm yelling out the window, I've got to take my seatbelt off. I've got to take my seatbelt off. Don't hear anything. So I just slowly reach for it and I hear a shotgun. Oh my God. And I throw my hands back out the window. Almost an unauthorized evacuation, but not quite. Could have been a double whammy prompt. One of the other cops yells, seatbelt, seatbelt, seatbelt. So they all kind of calm down. Oh boy. They say, take your seatbelt off and slide over. So I reach down, take my seatbelt off, slide across the truck, get out, do the same thing, you know, hands up, back up, follow the instructions very clearly.

17:25And they put me in handcuffs and they put me in the back of a different squad car at this point. But now they've kind of got the scene controlled. So at least the tensions feel like they're down a little bit. So they get us in the back of the cars. First, they're talking to Carl to understand what happened. I can see what's going on. There's two cops standing outside of my car. They're talking to him. Feels like a while, but you know, who knows what time is at this point. They're done talking to Carl. They come over to me. they're talking to me and we're telling the same story we're like listen this guy was tailgating us we thought this would be funny and they're like what possibly would make you think that this is fun and we're like uh i don't know they are in his car tearing the car apart looking for a gun at this point they find the toy gun but they're like the driver said it was a real gun we're like it wasn't a real gun it was this cap gun after however long it is they finally believe us so they get us both out they get us next to each other they take the cuffs off and then the local sergeant who both of us actually became semi friends with after the fact is just laying into us like what is wrong with you you've taken up all these resources you could have gotten your head blown off pointing at me yeah scared straight it's 1998 so there's real no cell phones so now they got to figure out how to get a hold of our parents because we're both minors so they call carl's parents no one's home they leave a very detailed message they call my parents no dice they lay in a little bit they try it again nothing nothing so they finally decide they're going to let us go on the caveat that they are going to follow up continuously until they get a hold of an adult to confirm that the message has been relayed.

18:53So we get on the road. We start strategizing. We're like, OK, let's go to Carl's house first because his parents are going to get home first. And we got to get to that answering machine. Oh, so your plan is to now try to prevent either parents from knowing. Yes and no. We were going to delete the message so we could paint our story. Oh, OK, great, great, great, great, great. Because we knew they were going to call back and talk to him. So we wanted to get our story out first before they got to him. We erase it. his parents get there his dad was a tough sob not a happy camper yeah so much so later in life we had had some other challenges i moved away and every time i came back to visit i would get a call from his dad saying i don't want my son or you to end up in the hospital or in jail tonight okay he was worried i'm sure you have it with aaron you know when you get together the little devil on your shoulder just says yes do it sure sure there's nothing saying no don't do it so So we talk his parents out of murdering us.

19:44Really quick, does your friend's dad say there's any kind of grounding happening? Is there any punishment going to happen? I want to say it was three months, maybe six months. At that point, we were never allowed to see each other again. I mean, he was a groomsman in my wedding, so clearly that didn't last. But it was a while before we were allowed to see each other outside of school. Get to my parents, and it's pretty much verbatim, right? It's the same thing. It's, you're an idiot. They're just both laying into us. We're kind of playing it off. We didn't quite think about how serious it was probably until about five or six years ago.

20:13We're like, this was actually probably a pretty serious thing. And then that's where kind of the fact that we lived in a very white suburb and we were two white teenagers kind of checked in and we're like, we were probably pretty privileged in this situation. If we were not where we were and who we were, that could have ended very differently. Yeah. And then you got eight guns pointed at you. It can go wrong very easily. Yeah. And then it kind of carries along. It was in my wedding. We were getting married in Chicago. My wife and I, about 11 years ago, we actually just celebrated our 11 year anniversary.

20:39Congrats. At the rehearsal dinner, Carl opened up his wallet and took out the newspaper press clipping and read it to all of my in-laws and my wife. Wait, is this the caller too, Rob? Oh, it made the paper. Congratulations. Not a crazy big story, but we made the paper. Can I read it? Please. It says 1800 block 12th Avenue Northwest. Police were alerted to a hostage situation in the future shop parking lot that turned out to be the work of two teen pranksters the work of two teen prank one boy held a plastic toy gun to the head of his friend while the two drove about town police not knowing it was a joke stopped the boy's vehicle at the park and ride lot withdrawn guns that's fantastic yeah they don't realize what a blessing it was that they wrote that up for you guys.

21:29I know it's pretty funny. So that story comes out, I'd say probably every 24 months or so. Classic tale. I hope you have it framed in your home. I actually don't have a copy. That's Carl's copy. He carries it in his wallet still. So I ask him to take a picture out and send it to him. Well, tell the laminated at least. Well, we already know Carl's kind of playing fast and loose. Oh, well, David, that's wonderful. That's such a teenage story. Well, I want to thank you guys so much. She would absolutely murder me if I didn't give Jen a shout out. She's been talking forever about this story and how it's going to be on armchair and how she's excited to pop in, but can't because she's at home with the movers.

22:09Well, Jen, we love you and we thank you. Shout out. Yeah, big time. You're pretty much the source of all of our news and all of our culture. Uh-oh. For better or worse, right? Thank you. Well, David, it's delightful to meet you. All right. Have a good one. All right. Take care. I hope their move goes smoothly. Me too. That's all you can hope these days. Moves are tough. You know what's interesting about moving stories? Oh, that's a good one. We're all writing down. We do have to pick today. Oh, great. Moving stories. Do you want to do military stories? I'll bang your butt, Jerry Rad. Hello. Is this Laura?

22:45Yes, it is. Oh, I have such a sweet spot for the name. Oh, that's nice to hear. Sweet Laura LeBeau. Where are you, Laura? I'm in Brooklyn, New York. So unfortunately, quiet and closets are two things we don't have. But I do have a podcast mic. I was going to say, why do you have such a nice mic? I've done like educational content and worked in tech. Okay. And are you a Brooklyn native? No, I've been here like 13 years. I came here immediately after I graduated college. You did. You couldn't get there fast enough. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. What percentage of folks that you're meeting in Brooklyn are from Brooklyn?

23:185 %? I feel like it's honestly half and half. I mean, I'm a photographer, so there's a lot of artists here and creatives that have been here their whole lives. So I feel very blessed to know a lot of natives and a lot of really cool transplants. We know almost nobody from L.A. Jess, that's about it, right? Max. In our entire friendship circle. I know, Max. Two out of 20. Yeah. It's rare, though. Okay, so you got arrested, and I'm just going to say I'm going to judge a book by its cover and say unlikely from the package that I'm seeing. I had not won detention in high school. Like I was a pretty good girl.

23:51But when I go hard, I like really go hard. Good for you. You snap. Yeah, it's a good one. Okay, let's hear it. So I went to college in the SEC as well. I went to USC. Oh, nice. That's South Carolina for those who are unfamiliar. That's not. Exactly. It's South Carolina. Oh, yeah. I would hear you. I would definitely think Southern California, whatever the fuck it stands for you. Right. Right. It's the OG USC. The Ridge. So it was my junior year. I was at a party and a boy that I was about to start dating. We were getting to know each other. We were pretty uninvolved in the rest of the party, honestly.

24:30We were down in his room. We were smoking a lot, kind of made out a little bit. Pot or cigarettes? Pot. Okay, great. I mean, we smoked cigarettes too, but there were some younger freshmen at this party. It was like early in the year. And that was part of why we were sort of away from everyone. So a noise complaint comes through. The cops get called. And instead of someone older taking charge and saying, hey, everybody shut up. We're just going to tell the cops we're going to be quiet and they'll go away and everything will be fine. All these tiny little freshmen started running out the door, down the drive, everywhere.