Cops and Ocarinas

[fairjennet]

It was a little after midnight last night when a policeman knocked on the door of our hotel room. He seemed nice--short and cute and blue-eyed--and he couldn't seem to help smiling at me as he poked his head around the doorjamb. He asked oh so politely to come inside. Honestly, I thought he had the wrong room, because I couldn't figure out what on earth he was doing there, so I said sure. Why not? I knew we hadn't done anything illegal.

After he came inside, my polite puzzlement quickly turned to fear. He stopped being friendly. He wouldn't tell us why he was there until we answered his questions, and his questions were all about the kiddo. He wanted to know how old he was and why he wasn't in school. He wanted to know what was wrong with him. That was the scariest question of all, because there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. He was just sleeping. Startled, Larry and I both looked at our kiddo. He looked fine to us, and we said as much. Then we looked at each other--a big, giant WTF?! look--and then turned that look to the cop.

He asked us if we were smoking crack.

Seriously, he thought we were crack heads. Someone had walked past our open window and called CPS because they thought they saw Larry smoking something out of a pipe.

Of course, Larry was doing nothing of the sort. He was, however, making an ocarina. It's small, and maybe it looked like a crack pipe when he held it up to his mouth? I guess he had a cigarette lit, too, which would explain the smoke. Larry demonstrated this to the officer, played the ocarina a bit...and the man was enchanted. There was no more talk of drugs or insinuations child abuse, the barely concealed disgust just vanished. Suddenly we were decent people. The policeman even asked if he could buy an ocarina from us.

Pretty crazy, huh?

None of it seemed real. The cop actually apologized for bothering us before he left. Still, it took me about two hours to calm down enough to go to sleep, and I'm still a little shaky today. The whole situation was just so weird.

Comments

[luin77.livejournal.com]

o.O *points to icon*

This was very scary indeed. Eeep!

I am a bit torn about someone calling CPS (is this the police or some kind of child protection?). Generally, I think it is very good when people look after another. I rather have one cop look one time too often than one time where someone could have stepped in, but didn't and a child (or someone else) gets hurt. But crafting an ocarina and a lit cigarette... o.O

*more hugs*

[fairjennet.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

Yeah, it was some scary stuff. I do agree with you about people looking after one another, and I'm not angry at the person who called CPS. I'd call if I thought I saw someone doing drugs around children. It was only frightening because the policeman wouldn't tell us why he was there at first. (CPS is child protective services, but apparently they sent policemen in first--the social workers would have come in later.) It's never fun to be seen as a criminal--even when you haven't done anything wrong.
Anyway, it all turned out okay, and I'm less freaked out now that a few days have passed.

[jaiden-s.livejournal.com]

WHAT??!! OMG. ((hug)) That must have been so scary!

[fairjennet.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, it was scary. I've only been that frightened one other time in my whole life, and that was when the doctor thought the boyo might need brain surgery. Being so powerless in the face of a threat to my child...there just aren't any words.

Luckily, it turned out okay...but man, I don't ever want to live another few minutes like that again. Ever.
*hugs*

[phyncke.livejournal.com]

OM f-ing god. But I can imagine why that happened. Though there is no smoke.

AUGH.

[fairjennet.livejournal.com]

I know. It was unreal. I can't be angry, because I know it was someone trying to protect my child...but still, mistaking an ocarina for a crack pipe? What were they smoking?

[phyncke.livejournal.com]

People are weird and cops are even weirder.

[stendhaliser.livejournal.com]

Good that the cop behaved relatively reasonably when you explained. At least. I guess he had good intentions. Sometimes they do, as weird as that sounds.

Hope you have recovered from the scare.

[fairjennet.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'm mostly over the scare. I think I just needed time to put it in perspective. In the moment, I could only react to the fact that someone in authority thought I was the worst kind of criminal and wouldn't tell me why. Add the saftey of my child into the mix, and you get one frightening experience.

But, I agree, the policeman did behave reasonably once he had an explaination. He was just doing his job, and I can't fault him for that. Still, the whole thing was very disturbing.