Never A Bad Time To Cover Your Butt

This is the story I always tell when I want to emphasize that documentation is always a good thing, even if it means having to talk to a cop.

Several years ago, I was out with friends at a local, non-chain diner. We’d sat toward the back, away from the windows, because there were several of us, and we were less obtrusive that way. This was during our college years and we had a tendency to be loud by accident, and we didn’t want to be a bother, considering it was midnight. 

About halfway through our dinner, a customer from the front of the store came over to the table looking concerned and asked if anyone at the table owned one of the cars out front. She’d been at the window booth right at the front and needed to find the owner of a white car right next to her booth. Unfortunately, she described my car, and when I mentioned as much, she told me that she’d just seen someone hit my parked car and drive away. We hadn’t seen anything, due to our placement in the diner, but she’d seen the whole thing. 

Luckily, on inspection, they’d only really dented my back fender and scraped some paint. It wasn’t anything particularly note-worthy, especially since by that point my car was on its way to becoming a bit of a beater, but I was a bit angry that whoever hit my car had the audacity to just LEAVE. If they’d just come inside and said, “Hey, man, sorry I dinged your car. Here’s my information for insurance,” I wouldn’t have blinked.

So, even though I detest the police in every form, I decided to give them a ring since this was technically a hit-and-run, and I figured that if something more major popped up later because of it, I’d want some kind of proper documentation for my insurance. (I didn’t want to find out that, say, one of my tail lights had also been damaged and I simply didn’t see it since it was late at night and the parking lot was poorly lit.)

Of course, the cop who arrived seemed very disinterested, like she didn’t want to be there, even though it was clearly a very slow evening, considering she arrived fairly quickly after a non-emergency call. I gave her my ID and registration, the whole deal, and then she came back with this. 

Officer #1: “Your insurance is expired.”

I got this car before I graduated high school, so as a matter of practicality, it was bought and insured in my father’s name, and we’d agreed that it would stay there until I’d fully graduated since I was moving roughly every year and the paperwork was simpler if I wasn’t changing addresses every twelve months. My father is probably the straightest-laced man who’s ever lived — I’m not sure he’s CAPABLE of getting a parking ticket, let alone missing an insurance payment — so I knew for a fact that there was no way in h*** this was true. 

Me: “What?”

Officer #1: “Your insurance is expired.”

Me: “That can’t be the case; I just got my car, and everything should be up to date. I’m going to need to call my dad and sort this out because this has to be an error of some kind.”

(Un)surprisingly, she didn’t press at all after that. She wrote down everything else and left without a word. At the time, I was a bit pressed about having someone hit my car and leave, so I didn’t really put two and two together, but looking back, I have to wonder if she was fishing for a ticket for something she’d thought I’d admit to. But she at least did the most basic function of her job, and I got an email a few days later from the station regarding the open case, including the case number. Nothing ever came of it, as I honestly expected.  

Regardless, I tell this story not because of the event in question, but because of the ripples it caused months later. 

It was that following Saint Patrick’s Day, and being in college, my friends and I were doing as many often did — getting absolutely drunk off our a**es and watching dumb movies with a large group of friends. Our house was host to such an event because it was within safe walking distance from campus, and being a duplex, we had relative privacy, especially since some of said friends were renting the other half of the duplex.

So, color me surprised when a police officer SHOWED UP AT OUR DOOR, entirely unprompted. I put on my best attempt at being sober and answered. 

Me: “Can I help you?”

Officer #2: “The gentleman across the street is claiming you hit his vehicle.”

The officer gestured behind her to a gentleman who was raving on the sidewalk across from us. He was likely a resident of the student apartments across the street, clearly drunker than I was, and also pissed, talking to other cops. 

Officer #2: “Someone hit his parked car and left a white paint mark behind, and he says this came from your car. Have you been anywhere this evening?”

I realized, with a mix of horror and (honestly) delight, that she was talking about the scrape on my bumper from the parking lot incident at the diner. The man had apparently seen the aftermath of his car getting dinged by a white vehicle and, seeing missing paint on my car, assumed it was me. Since he hadn’t seen the car in question, and mine was RIGHT THERE, I was the obvious answer/scapegoat. The horror was that this guy was for real, considering I hadn’t moved my car in days; the delight was that I could prove it wasn’t me. 

Me: “No, and that paint scrape is actually from another incident a couple of months ago.”

I found the email on my phone and showed her. 

Me: “Here’s the case number and the detective’s name related to the paint scrape.”

She poked around on her own device for a few moments as she put in the case number, considered what she saw, and then gave me a shrug. 

Officer #2: “All right then, have a good night.”

And she left. No apology for accusing me of a crime I didn’t commit, nothing. I’m not entirely sure what she would have done, to be quite frank, because there weren’t cameras and it wasn’t like the dude could prove it, but I was always glad I had the documentation, if only to keep that meeting short, sweet, and simple. It wouldn’t have been a great night to get even briefly detained for something I hadn’t done while my friends were partying, in my own house, without me. 

In short, put it in writing.