This is an excerpt from my memoir, Officer Banfield — the honest story of my years as a corrections and police officer, hitting bottom in alcoholism, and the long road to recovery.
From my point of view, now, it was a bullshit arrest too, but I had the right to make it. Legally he was on campus property. He was in the middle of a campus parking lot. He had been trespassed from campus at least once if not arrested several times for breaking that.
It was a perfectly legit reason to make an arrest, totally like, "Hey, you were fucking with me at the bar the other night. I got you this time. You're
not getting away with being in the wrong place at the wrong time this time."
So I demanded that we made an arrest with the officer who was newer. I pushed for it.
I said, "Yep, let's get this guy."
He said, "But Sarge is going to be…"
I said, "Fuck him. Fuck him. It doesn't matter what Sarge says. This guy's trespassing and we need to get him and make sure we teach him a lesson so he doesn't do this shit again."
I made sure he got arrested and Sergeant was pissed. It was 5:30 and I was doing some little bullshit trespassing arrest when I could have just let the guy go and say, "Look, please stay off campus sir or you're getting arrested next time."
I said, “No. Got his ass."
So, there you go.
That was my really great policing for you. Let's see.
Some other stories? Another guy, a DUI.
I was sitting on the Sumter and the Blossom Street spot I told you about earlier. Dude did the red light like a stop sign.
At this exact intersection, I had seen drunk driving, car flipped over before, so I knew this was a spot where people were drunk driving on the
way back from the bar.
It was a good spot to sit where you could get a DUI, so I sat here, and
Dude did the red light like a stop sign.
I went blue light on him and he pulled over right away by the Coker Center. I got out with him and he admitted to drinking. He failed the field sobriety tests and I arrested him.
Lady Gaga's Poker Face is on and I felt like the song fit the moment.
That was on when I was taking him to jail and he said something about his poker face.
I said, "Boy if you had a poker face, you wouldn't be in the car right now.
You would not be going to jail right now if you had that poker face my friend."
Then, this is the crazy part from this story.
I ended up at the apartment I live in. I was hanging out with a neighbor, this cute girl and her friend, and I was trying to get to know them a little better, if you know what I'm saying, and this dude came over.
I had got a pending drunk driving case with this guy and he showed up. I said, "Oh, shit. What are you doing here?"
He said, "Dude, you arrested me."
I said, "I know. What's up? How's it going? How's that court case coming?"
"I am getting an attorney," he said.
I said, "Oh, good."
He said, "Dude, you can come eat."
He managed a restaurant, and he said, "Dude, you can come have a meal on me any time in my restaurant."
I said, "All right, I'll do that."
So, I actually came out and drank at his restaurant one night and I probably drunk drove on the way home too.
I might also have walked.
A lot of nights I just got drunk and walked home drunk, and I would get a ride home from USCPD officers sometimes.
Other times, I would just walk a mile and a half or two miles home drunk. That's amazing nothing ever happened to me doing that.
But I went out and literally had drinks at the restaurant this dude worked at, and I think I drank with this guy too at my neighbor's place.
Extra sketchy. Let's go.
I believe he got off with that DUI because the basic strategy with a DUI, especially if the lawyer knew you were at USCPD where the turnover rate was so high, was just to stall.
The basic strategy the attorneys used was to just continue the case over and over again, to continue it and continue it, and they just figured that the USCPD officer soon enough would go to a different department.
They wouldn't care about or wouldn't be available for their DUI court appearance, and then the judge would just dismiss the case because the officer that was there to arrest was not there to testify.
So, that was the basic strategy.
I believe this was how the guy got off of his DUI. He requested a bunch of continuances, then when I quit being a police officer, I didn't give a shit about any of the court cases.
I remember the major called me up one day after I had been gone from the department maybe a month, he was talking about these court cases coming up and I needed to appear.
I said, "No, the fuck I don't. I'm in Mississippi right now. You realize you can summon me all you want, but I'm in a different state. It doesn't matter whether you want me to come to the court case. So, no Major. I'm not coming to any of my court cases. As far as I'm concerned, everyone that I've arrested who has not gone to court yet can just get off. I don't give a shit anymore. You can take those court cases and shove them up your ass. Forget having me help you out with any of those."
That's how I rolled. Another DUI.
I was sitting next to the Coliseum. I had a nice little spot.
It was the same place I used to walk by and drive by drunk on the way home from the Flying Saucer, and this is how I knew that people would drive drunk down here. It was from driving drunk down there myself.
I would sit at the Coliseum where you could watch all the stop signs just north of Blossom Street off to the west a little bit of Assembly, so that you
would be kind of looking out west, on the west side of the Coliseum. There was a ton of stop signs, people would get drunk and just not even slow down for them.
On this one night, there was a dude driving like he was ready to become a race car driver. He didn't even slow down a little bit for the stop sign and he slid through the red light going left and I hauled ass after him.
I floored it, hit the blue lights and the only reason I caught him was because of one of the infamous trains in downtown Columbia that was blocking Blossom Street.
He was going so fast, I was two blocks away when I hit the blue lights and floored it, and he had a full running start obviously.
The only way I knew it was him is because the train stopped and he was the one person at two in the morning when the train was stopped that hauled ass and was trying to go through the liquor store parking lot to get around the train.
He imagined the blue lights were after him, which they were. I'm glad I didn't get hit too because when I had the blue lights after him, several other cars needed to stop so I could go through the red light right behind him after he did.
I caught up with him in a liquor store parking lot. Dude was wasted and this really got to me. He was out celebrating his wife getting pregnant again.
I can understand how excited you can be because with my ex-wife and I, we were wondering if she would get pregnant again for like a year, and now we have got two children, so obviously, yes.
He was out celebrating his wife getting pregnant again. He was so
excited and he was driving like he was going to kill somebody driving his car that night.
Maybe I saved his life.
Maybe I saved someone else's life. I don't know.
But I went through the field sobriety tests with him and he failed them. I took him to jail for DUI and there was this big thing. We thought we had lost his wallet, but then somebody found it in the car, which that was the kind of dumb stuff you did not want to get in hot water with because then you would get accused of stealing it or something.
So thankfully, his wallet was found.
It's amazing the detail you can remember 10 years later.
He got a good attorney and as far as I know, he got off the DUI as well because the attorney again went with the stall tactic and like I said, I didn't give a shit what happened to my cases after I wasn't a police officer anymore.
So, his attorney did a great job with the stall tactics as well.
One of the last arrests I made should have been a DUI, but I think I just arrested her for reckless driving.
There was a girl on the way to a booty call.
She ran the "No turn on red" sign, and then ran another red light.
Actually, she drove around, stopped cars the wrong way to make a right turn. I wish I could have been on the receiving end of that booty call to
know that a girl wanted to come over to fuck me that bad.
My God, dude!
She went the wrong way. Alright.
So, it was a two-lane road with a divided yellow line, and then a left turn lane. She went the wrong way and made a right on Sumter. It wasn't Blossom, it was north of Sumter and Main maybe. It was right in the middle of campus in front of the Long Street Theater on Sumter.
This girl went the wrong way, made a right turn and hauled ass, made another right just driving fast.
I pulled her over and for some reason, it just broke my heart because I thought, "Shit, this is me right here. This is the girl version of me right now. She's drunk. She's trying to go have sex at four in the morning."
I said, "Shit, this is probably what the stripper looked like when she was coming over to my house."
I said, "This is such bullshit. People get to get away with stuff."
Meanwhile, the corporal was telling me, "Dude, you need to take her to jail for drunk driving."
I said, "I don't want to man. I don't want to."
This girl was one of the first people I stopped I was really relating with.
I felt like, "This is the girl version of me. This is like I'm taking myself to jail and it feels like such bullshit right now."
I thought, "Is this going to help her?"
I arrested her and took her to jail for reckless driving because I didn't feel like doing all the DUI stuff and I wasn't sure if she would be able to pass the Breathalyzer.
I took her to jail for reckless driving to get her off the street and that started to break me.
I felt like, "You've got one girl who runs over half the Greek village, she gets to go home because she's got a political sign in the back of her car, but you got this girl who was not even doing as bad of a thing, just drunk driving, she didn't even hit anything yet, going to a booty call, she's nobody important so she's got to go to jail."
That shit was just starting to bother me and I took her into jail. I think I have some more interesting DUI stories.
"No, Jerry. These aren't that interesting. These are not actually that good."
There is another one.
Some of the fun arrests you would get would be when there were events.
If an officer was working overtime somewhere like the Colonial Center, which I talked about earlier in the book, and where there would be these great overtime events like a concert or something, if an officer made an arrest, then if you were on shift you would go pick the person up and take them to jail.
One night there was a Coliseum event going on and we got a call that there was a girl pissing in the stands, like she just got down in the middle,
without getting up or anything.
This was like a basketball arena. There was a concert going on and this doesn't seem that unreasonable to me honestly. She just pissed like right next to everybody in the stands.
USCPD officers showed up, arrested her and they said, "Banfield, you go over and transport her to jail."
I said, "Okay."
So, I got this girl in the back of the car. She was former military and she was telling me about an awful life she'd had and she was just drunk and bat-shit crazy. She was trying to kick the windows out in the back of the car. She was flopping around all over the place.
I'm glad I was able to just get her to jail without having any damage done to her or the car or anything.
It's seeing so many people like that at their worst that makes it hard to be a police officer because you get this skewed view of the world. You get this out of context view and yet there is an opportunity to be grateful and help out in these circumstances too. I probably missed the opportunity to be really helpful there and connect, which given the situation I tried just to not make anything worse.
Another night, there were guys sending off fireworks at the dorm room I used to live in and I got a call to go over there. These were a few more prior military guys and it's interesting here how the different fates they received.
Two guys were mouthing off and talking shit to me.
"You little campus pig. You don't have jurisdiction."
They were talking shit about how I couldn't do anything.
One of the things you always try to control is body positioning. If someone is standing up, they are in a good position to run or to hit you. So one of the basic things you do to see if people are going to comply is asking people nicely, "Will you sit down?"
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.