Unfortunately not of mine, but of some very close friends.
Now I'm not sure if anyone here knows Haywards Heath ("The Heart Of Mid Sussex!" my arse...), but several of my friends happen to live there. Picture the scene... 8 o clock on a Friday night, but being winter it's already past dark. Two girls, both 18 (but slight in stature) sitting on swings in a park behind a leisure center - not doing anything, no drinking, no loudness; just swinging. As it happens this took place during the recent 'Operation Storm', the local police basically just trying to crack down on the 200 strong local band of stoners and generic college/secondary school wasters hanging around in groups of 50 in public places and smoking. Ok, fair enough, sounds reasonable. So, instead of stopping those kiddies the good ol' Bill decide to approach my two aforesaid friends and proceed to have a conversation consisting basically of the following:

Asking what they are doing out this late - the two girls are 18, and its 8. O. Clock.
Asking for ID (apparantly sitting in a park after dark requires some form of ID), which they promptly declared blatent forgeries for one girl, and got immediately suspicious of the other girls lack of immediate ID. 'Cause she really needed to bring it with her to go to a park.
Asking what they are doing out alone - why you ask? - apparantly someone could dash out of the surrounding bushes, grab them and cart them off as abductees...
Asking if their parents knew they were out so late - again, they're 18, and its 8 o bleeding clock (cycle through ID routine again).

This continues along similar themes for a good 20 minutes, culminating in the officers giving them a written warning on the grounds of 'Anti-social behavior', as the park happened to be classified as an Anti-social area (although surely being out and about, 'socialising' if you will kind of makes this even more redundant). Plod tells them to get home quick and leaves.

Of course the fact there were two more of my mates lying being a grassy knoll ten feet away rolling a sessions worth of joints is irrelevant, they weren't to know that :)
( jme, Thu 8 Jan 2004, 22:15, Reply)