Eriq & Jim | Eluding the Cops '94 | page 1

Dealing With the Police in the Only Way I Know How (Oct 1994)

One evening I was at a party on the third floor of Harkness having a good old time with a bunch of people who only minutes before had been total strangers. Beer was plentiful and the tunes were even good (no Bob Marley, for example). I was exhuberant but not naughty, though I was sighted at times with a can of spray paint which I never deployed. But then a door opened across the hall and I could see out through a front window into Harkness bowl; there was a police cruiser pulling up across the grass. This was an ominous sign in as much as the only time that had ever happened before I had been arrested making granola. So I ran down the back stairs and saw a Securitaté guard standing there, arms crossed. He didn't notice me, and I continued down the hall to the south, put down spray paint and beer and went out on the patio over the kitchen and jumped off on the West side of Harkness. When the Securitaté guard heard my boots hit the asphalt he hollered after me "Hey!" but any who chased me rapidly lost ground and I vanished into the backyards and fences in the vicinity of Leslie's House. I cursed my fate that I couldn't seek refuge in her place, but desperate as the times were I would not demean myself by asking her for assistance. A few minutes later I went back towards Elm street, this time with my plaid shirt off and under my arm so that I would look somewhat different. I ducked under a bush as a Securitaté car drove by, but on Elm street I was all exposed as a cop car approached. I decided to play it sweet, hoping he would continue onward, but when he pulled in front of me I gauged the situation as best as I could, with all due reference to the cop shows I have seen. In such shows the bad guy who runs is inevitably caught and humiliated. But I am young and thin and was drunk and blessed with that chips-are-down hormone adrenaline. What was more, I knew the lay of the land very well and the cop was old and plump and probably a moron as well. So I RAN!! watch me go, around behind Fred Hill's house, leaping over a couple making love in the grass (they screamed), over a fence, crashing through a bush. Anything was possible. While I pondered whether to leap up on to a roof (it seemed easily possible, but I feared I might make too much noise), I heard the distant sound of the couple in the grass, apparently no longer making love, now screaming again as the cop pursuing me stomped over them hot on my quickly cooling trail. I crossed a few streets, and climbed into a garage and slept for an hour. Being as drunk as I was, it was not difficult to sleep once I was seated; alcohol had blunted my fears. When I awoke, I was unaware of where I was at first, but then it all came back to me. I staggered out onto College street and saw a cruiser parked facing West, lights off, still waiting for me to sneak back to the East. So I headed down through back yards to the Arboretum, and across that towards Ben's Neaubaurer's House down south of South Street on Main Street. In that region there is a new supermarket called Missler's, and I was in its parking lot when another cop drove by, and seeing me, pulled in. So I ran north, towards the center of town, behind a large building and then out into some yards, and then south again, to Ben's house, where I stood breathing heavy, paranoid at the door, amazed that I had eluded the cops three times in one night. Ben appeared at about that time with a tale of car trouble in the 'Hood of Cleveland, how crack heads had helped push start his car and demanded money, about driving on 480 at night with no headlights, about the friendly police escort home, thus "cops can be really cool." To which I calmly responded, "I also dealt with some cops tonight" and went on to top his story with my own.

Eriq & Jim | Eluding the Cops '94 | page 1