Anyhow, the definition of an arrest is when you are detained by the police and are not free to go. So although I was not jailed or charged with any crimes I was falsely arrested for about 2 hours and not free to go. I was pissed off too because at the time I was making around $30 or $35 an hour and I lost from $60 to $70 in lost wages because of this false arrest by the Phoenix Police.

My dad had customized license plates on his car. I think they said “SOUNDEX” for his business. My dad is not a very ethical businessman and somebody stole the license plates off of his car.

When he reported the license plates as stolen the Mesa Police incorrectly placed an entry in the computer systems that his TRUCK was stolen, not the license plates. So low and behold his truck is now listed in the NCIC criminal computer system as stolen, when it is not stolen.

The next screw up happened when the morons at the Arizona DMV issued him a new set of customized license plates with the same plate number as the stolen plates, i.e. “SOUNDEX”. So now in addition to his truck being listed as stolen his license plates are also listed as stolen.

I used the truck one day during lunch because I had to haul some stuff. A Phoenix cop saw me and though I was suspicious, probably because of my long hair and ran the trucks license plates thru the NCIC computer and as expected the truck was listed as stolen.

Of course that gave the cop probable cause to pull me over and arrest me.

I explained to the cop “Hey it’s not my truck. It’s just my dad’s business truck.” It took the cops about two hours to track everything down and figure out that the truck was not stolen before they released me.

Most of the time I am around the police they have been very abusive. But this time they actually treated me nice. They didn’t handcuff me or anything. They even let me sit in the truck the whole time. Moreover, they did not any threats to me like they usually do demanding that I confess to crimes or I will be jailed.

The only thing I was pissed off about was that I lost two hours of work, which I was not paid for.

When the Phoenix Police released me they told me they could not remove the truck from being listed as “stolen” and that if I got stopped again the police that stopped me would think the truck was stolen. I guess on the good side at least they told me I was driving a “hot” truck. They said it would take about a day to get the truck removed from the computer systems as being stolen.

That night after work, I called the Phoenix Squaw Peak Police station and asked if the truck was still listed as stolen. Those bastards were no help. They demanded that I drive down to the police station with the truck to find out. I guess they wanted to arrest me as a dumb criminal.

I explained to them that the truck was incorrectly LISTED AS STOLEN and I wanted to see if the incorrect listing had been removed. They didn’t help those idiots were more interested in arresting me then helping me.

Finally, the next day I called the Phoenix Police and verified that the truck was no longer listed as stolen.

Well at least one of the times I was falsely arrested the cops actually had probable cause to make the false arrest and didn’t violate my civil rights.