underage drinking at the party but they turned out to be wrong.
Posted on 06/07/2005 3:21:33 PM PDT by tgslTakoma
Anna Phelan and Emily Adams wanted to end their four years at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School with a memorable backyard graduation party.
There was a blues band, a moon bounce, a popcorn machine and a pit for making s'mores. Guests feasted on hot dogs, hamburgers and bratwurst. There was plenty of ginger ale, cranberry juice and root beer to go around. What there wasn't plenty of was alcohol.
"It was pretty low-key, and it was just sweet," Margaret Engel Adams, Emily's mother, said of the party for about 80 friends and relatives. "It was just pretty much out of Norman Rockwell."
All that changed about 9:30 p.m. Thursday, Adams said, when a Montgomery County police officer knocked on the Phelans' door, in the 4600 block of Rosedale Avenue in Bethesda, to say that someone had complained about the noise. The officer then asked Anna's mother, Kathy Phelan, if he and several other officers could give breath tests to the teenagers. She refused.
So police stationed patrol cars at each end of her street, six in all, and began giving the tests to guests as they left the party, she said. None of the teenagers tested positive for alcohol, she said.
Officers then began ticketing vehicles parked outside the Phelans' house, she said, including ones that belonged to neighbors who weren't at her party. Some vehicles were ticketed for a wheel improperly touching a curb or for extending into a driveway. Emily Adams, 18, received a $35 parking ticket; her Honda Odyssey minivan was parked directly in front of the Phelans' home.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Thanks for the link -- listening now.
Hey, they have access to night vision goggles that they're not using anymore to catch seatbelt scofflaws.
"Seems like you'd be able to refuse that."
You can. But, if the same as Texas, you lose your license for 90 days or, if under 18, your license until 18.
Stupid laws.
This police force has way to many cops. I would say a 30% cut in police officers would be appropriate.
No, the other unit was on that detail. :)
One of the officers is on next...
Not too far off, huh?
Police officer (paraphrase): It's for the kids.
Me either. and there are parts of Delaware that are acually worse........that's a reason I'm thankful to be out of there.
Never a dull moment out here.
I'll tell you what, if it had been my house, that would have been the biggest mistake they could have made.
This is all a result of the militarization of the police force.
I dealt with that in Dover, Delaware for years - I was on a first name basis with the DPD dispatchers, yet it was me that got harrassed on a regular basis by the zoning/inspections department.
I feel for the people in Montomery county - but they are the ones that need to do something about the problems.
The actual police should get censure from conservatives on this one also. They could have told the chief to go to hell and that they would not issue tickets like this. The only reason that they did issue those tickets is to make the rest of the neighborhood hate the people that brought this all down on them, ie the neighbors who refused the police the opportunity to invade thier homes.
This strikes me as the perfect way a police state operates. Make it living hell on people who don't comply, even though they have the right not to comply. And yes they could have told the officers that they refused to take the tests, but then they would have suffered more wrath from the police. The police here should be sued by the whole neighborhood as a group.
Eventually it would work that they would have to give it up and back down. Until then, take the names of the actual ones that signed their names on a ticket and put them up on the net with their pictures for public censure. I am sure that if you do that then there will be many others out there that will recognize some of them and begin to email about mistreatment at their hands. This abuse does not begin overnight.
Thanks, this officer sounds like he is in CYA mode.
Hope these people had a video recorder going.
Montgomery County likely spends lots of dollars on PR to convince the kids that they are the good guys out there!
How much do you think that it will take to convince these young voters that the Polic don't need to be paid any more than they are because they don't do anything much to earn it? I think this is where the kids get the notion that the Police are out to get them rather than those who are criminals.
But watch the pro-police lobby here jump on all this as justified.
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