Board Thread:Watercooler 2.0/@comment-6191693-20131230040409/@comment-6191693-20151206102317

Well that was the strangest, craziest, scariest hour and a half of my life. You know those things that would only ever happen to me? Well, that just happened.

I had a few friends over for drinks. I'm a little drunk. It's 2:30 in the morning. I'm on Facebook, winding down, and fixin' to go to bed. Suddenly, there's a frantic ring at my doorbell: DING DONG DING DONG DING DONG DING DONG DING DONG. "Who the fuck could that be at this hour?" I thought, thinking maybe Jimmy or Megan left something at my house, but it sounded far too urgent for something like that.

I answer the door and there's this woman. She's filthy, there's leaves in her hair, she's all cut and bruised up, and she says, "You have to help me; he's trying to kill me!" She's freezing cold, dressed only in soaking-wet yoga pants, sweat shirt, one sock, and no shoes. Holy shit. Of course I let her in and locked the door, trying to calm her down and ask what happened. She begged me to call 911, so of course I did.

The 911 operator asked what her name was and I gave it to her. The 911 operator said that there was actually a warrant out for her arrest for stalking and assault charges. The operator warned me not to let her in my house. Too late for that lol. She told me to try to take her to the porch and to be careful around her. First thing I did was grab my folding knife and tell her it was to protect her from the guy who was after her, but I was prepared to use it against whomever I needed to. She wouldn't go to the porch because she was afraid he would find her, so I convinced her that right next to the front door was the safest place in the house because it has a heavy metal door. Then my mission was to try to keep her calm while I waited for the cops to arrive.

She said she was at her friend's house and her friend's boyfriend, who was high on who-knows-what, accused her of stealing $40 and attacked her. She said her friend tried to pull the guy off her, but his two friends pulled her off of him while he kept beating her. She managed to grab a lamp to try to defend herself and smashed it on him, cutting him badly and managing to escape. She said he and his friends had guns and they chased her into the woods. She said she hid in a creek for a while until the cold got to be too much, then ran to my condo complex and rang all the doorbells until someone answered. That someone happened to be me.

I finally got her to calm down. I gave her a makeup remover wipe to get some of the mud off of her face, a glass of water, and my old trench coat to get warm. I tried to talk to her and tell her everything was going to be OK. Then she said she was worried about her mom whom she lived with in the same building as the guy who supposedly attacked her. She was worried this guy and his friends might either go after her mom (who is mentally disabled) and/or trash her apartment. I assured her that, since her mom lived on the second floor, the only way in was through the front door and she was safe. Then she realized that she had somehow dropped her keys in the hallway and was terrified that they wouldn't even have to break in. She begged me to call 911 again and to check to see that A) they were still on their way (it had been a fairly long time at this point) and B) that they had gone to her mom's place to make sure she was OK before they came to pick her up.

I called 911 again and the operator said that the officers had already been to the building where her mom lives because the man who allegedly assaulted her had already pressed assault charges. As far as the operator knew, the only person with injuries was the guy with a cut on his hand from the broken lamp, so, presumably, the mom was OK. That was part of the reason they had taken so long. The other reason was when I gave the addresses during the first call, the operator had accidentally taken down both addresses as being on Montana Ave, instead of Montana and Mustang, so the cops were lost, looking for an address on Montana that doesn't exist. Tax dollars at work. So I corrected them and they said they would be right there, since they were just over on Montana.

I get a call from District 5 police dispatch, saying the cops are lost and can't find my address and can we please come out to the street and look for the cops. Ugh. And, of course, she was scared to go outside and I was scared to leave her alone in my house. It took some convincing, but I told her she could hold my hand and we would go out together to find the cops. Of course, they were just across the street and came right up to us and slapped her in cuffs. What the fuck? I mean, she may be an assault suspect, but she's happy to go with you. She even asked if they could go to the car because it was cold. For an hour and a half, she's been looking forward to you coming to pick her up and save her, to protect her. Put her in the back seat -- that plastic partition will protect you from a 150 pounds of terrified, unarmed, soaking wet and freezing cold girl. There was no reason for her to be in cuffs. Fucking ridiculous. It's a good thing she was white, otherwise they probably would have beat the shit out of her first, the way they were treating her.

Of course, she broke down crying because she didn't understand why she was being arrested (especially if she was telling the truth). I tried to assure her that, as long as she was telling the truth, then nothing bad would happen to her; they would just hold her until they figured things out. Of course, I was lying through my teeth -- I believed all or most of what she was telling me (she didn't seem to be fucked up on anything, as far as I could tell), but who knew if the cops/judge would, especially if the alleged victim had a serious cut and witnesses (even if they very well may have been accomplices) and she only had a few bruises and cuts. Plus, when the cops got there, they made a big deal out of her having fled the scene. I'm sorry, but if her story is even partially true, and she was fearing for her life, why the fuck wouldn't she flee the scene?

Once the one cop had her in his car, I caught the other before he drove off (had I not stopped him, he would have left without even speaking to me). I asked if he needed to talk to me -- the person who spent the last hour and a half with her, gave her shelter and water, hearing her side of the story in a friendly setting -- and his response was "Well, if you want to..." He wasn't even interested in learning my relationship with his suspect -- we were total strangers, but he had assumed we were friends or knew each other somehow. He didn't even let me tell my story -- just kept interrupting with what he saw at the crime scene, insisting that neither the accuser nor the accused was telling the whole story. That was probably true; however, I'm no detective, but if you're trying to learn the whole story, wouldn't you want to know what she told the complete stranger who took her in and gave her shelter and turned her in to the police? Pig was completely uninterested. Said he didn't know why she was in the guy's apartment in the first place and that it must have just been some kind of sex work. While that may be true, she said she was also friends with the guy's girlfriend. That's a perfectly good reason for her to have been there. She also said knows the guy pretty well; she even claimed to have saved his life recently with CPR when he overdosed on heroin. Who knows if that's true, but it's relevant information for an investigation. The cop who put the cuffs on her also commented that her hands were warm, so she must be high on something. Motherfucker, she just ran through the cold-ass woods and hid in a creek, then I took her into my nice, warm apartment and gave her a really nice, warm coat and lots of tight hugs to warm up. We were inside and she was warming her hands over the heater register literally 30 seconds before you arrested her. Of course her fucking hands are warm. What the fuck?

Someone's guilty here -- maybe him, maybe her, maybe both, but it's the cops' job to make sure that the right people are punished for it. Their complete disinterest in learning the truth fucking pisses me off. She seems like a sweet girl. She might have a few issues, but she was in a shitty situation that could very easily have been completely beyond her control. Even if her story was not 100% true, she definitely had reason to fear for her life and I do believe that at least 3/4 of what she told me was true or had some truth to it. Guilty or not, this girl deserves a fair trial and, with everything that's happened tonight, I'm not confident she'll get that. And I feel terrible for turning her over to those fucking assholes for that reason. I'm not sure what I should do about it, if there's even anything I CAN do. I just want her (and him) to be treated fairly, but so far, that's not what I've seen.

One more thing to add to the growing list of interactions with the Cincinnati Police that only confirm my belief that they're useless, lazy, crooked assholes.