Hello all. As some of you might know, I just got back from a west coast road trip: National Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, and Orange County. It was a lot of sight-seeing, gambling, drinking, clubbing, and eating. I saw Baron Davis of the New Orleans Hornets dancing with this hot blonde at Rain at the Palms. I also saw the JC guy from N'Suck at the spa there. Many other things to tell, but none bigger than my little run in with the law. Long Story, but it's worth it: On Monday night, August 18, my buddy and I left our hotel on the strip to go eat at a buffet a 15 minutes drive away. It was damn good food. On the way back, at about 11pm, I noticed the Stratosphere Tower hotel from a distance and decided that it was unnecessary to use the freeways when I could just follow the tower back to the hotel area of Las Vegas. After passing through some residential areas, I made my way towards Martin Luther King Blvd. My buddy tells me, "you know, MLK is the worst street to be on in every city." I replied, "yeah, I've heard the Chris Rock thing too, but look, it's well lit, and it's towards the direction of the hotels." But as I kept driving, things did turn more ghetto by the minute. It's was like a dark zone between safe residential las vegas and tourist hotel las vegas. This wasn't the casino downtown, but the real down town. "Damn," I said to my buddy, "I bet you a bunch of murders happen around here, and it's weird cause you can see the multi-million dollar hotels from here, so you'd think you're safe, but it looks so run-down." At that moment, a light starts flickering outside. At first, my buddy and I both thought it was a street light burning out. But after a minute, we noticed a helicopter shinning down in our area. I thought someone was running away from the cops on foot and they were looking for him. Oh well, for I thought to myself it will go away soon. 5 minutes and two turns later, it was becoming very obvious that the chopper wasn't going anywhere but around and directly over us shining down it's lights. I thought to myself, this cannot be good, but what the hell can this be? The closer I drove to the strip, the more I heard sirens in the background, but nothing extremely close. My buddy suggests we find hotel parking garage to pull into so we can get that damn chopper off our backs. That sounded like a good idea, but as I stopped at a red light near the hotel area, my buddy notices a cop car behind us with his lights off. The sirens were getting closer. I saw a Burger King just beyond the stoplight so I say, "I'm gonna pull in there just to see what the hell is up." The light turns green and as slowly start to make a right into the Burger King, another cop car blocks the entrance enough to where I stop and try to slowly get by it without hitting it. At that moment, a black officer jumps out of passenger door (our cars were perpendicular with the fronts facing eachoter), so he jumps out the opposite side from me and pulls out his gun pointing it directly at us. Then I notice a cop car coming from a side street on my left, and the cops from there jump out of their car and point their guns. And the cops directly behind us do the same. And the chopper above is shining it's light directly on us. I'm hitting the breaks, putting up my hands, ****ting my pants, and screaming "whoa! whoa! whoa! whoa!" My buddy, who can't see **** without his glasses heard me yelling and threw his hands up too. I thought to myself, "oh my God I must have ran over somebody while driving lost in downtown. Oh ****, I'm going to jail for manslaughter." Cop on the loud speaker "Driver." Me yelling at the top of my lungs "What!" Cop "Put your car in park and slowly exit the car with your hands up and back facing us." Me "Okaaaayyy!!!" So as I'm doing so they tell me to come towards them and I start turning around when I hear a quick and loud "Don't turn around!" Oh ****, I'm gonna get shot. Cop "Now get on your knees on the sidewalk and cross your ankles." Now, when I get nervous, my body tenses up, so my left leg started to cramp like a mother ****er. I hurting so bad that I need to strecth the hamstring, but that would mean standing up, and that would mean a bullet or a beating...and I was thinking, oh lord, I'm gonna get shot or beat because of a cramp in my leg. Now, while I'm on the sidewalk getting ready to piss myself again with at least 5 cops still pointing their guns at me, my buddy is in the car freaking out because he thinks the cops are gonna raid the car, and beat him, and take him to jail for kidnapping or something. But soon, the cops make him do the same as me. After we get searched and our cars get searched, some cops left and a few stayed to explain to us the situation. By the way, that was the first time I was so shocked that I had no idea what was in my pocket. "Do you have any weapons on you, what's in your pockets." I'm sayin "oh my God, I don't know what's in my pockets...I'm feeling a wallet in one...what the hell is that in the other?" Apparently, around the intersection of MLK and Oakley (where we were at) there was shooting between two cars, and one of them matched our description. Obviously we were not who they were looking for when they found souvineer mugs, a pillow, and a ironing board in our car. We explained we were just going back to our hotel from dinner. Man. Wow. The cops were really nice and friendly after they figured this pair of tourists from Texas were not the shooters they were looking for. Anyways. No shots, no harm. Just a minor heart attack and a lesson to avoid MLK for the rest of my life. As for the rest of the trip, feel free to take a gander at the pictures. Photos.yahoo.com/kmx03 click on the "West Coast Trip" folder. Coming to a Cops TV show near you, Kim "glad to not carry a gun" mylastname link to the cop picture is here: http://f1.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/km...+Trip+August+2003&.dnm=vegas+cops.jpg&.view=t
OMG!!!! That's the most amazing story I've ever read on here. Wow! Glad you're not like dead or something. But the best part is the picture you took WITH the officers. Nice touch.
You know what this means Kim? It means that Mooch has saved all your pics for future chopping.... btw, that was a great story...glad you guys managed to stave off a tragedy..could have been bad news.
That's funny about Vegas. There are some sections that are as bad if not worse than some of the baddest neighborhoods in the country. The strip is a nice aread and kept pretty clean. The stratosphere is strange. On one side of the building is the strip with its glitz and glamour, while the other side of the building is "drug alley" in Vegas. They actually mention not to go to the other side of the building to some of the patrons. I swear that building has to be the worse placed building in Vegas. There are some really nice residential areas of Vegas too. It IS the fastest growing city in America.
That's funny, Well I have no pics but a similar thing happened to a friend and me back in high school. I was in the the eleventh grade and my friend was a senior. It was Sunday night and he had just gotten a new LeBaron, this was back in 92. We didn't have school Monday for some reason so my friend I went to a club that night. When we left about 2:00AM we were driving down I10 East away from downtown and I told my friend to see how fast his car could go. He got it up to about 110 MPH and soon after we exited the highway. When we got off the freeway we were immediately stopped by at least 4 police cars, HPD, as well as the "Railroad Police", I had never heard of them. The officer told us that we were clocked by an HPD helicopter and they thought we were some drug dealers for some reason and they hand cuffed us and did a full cavity search of the car. After not finding anything they let us go but since my friend's car was in his dad's name they called his dad and he came and picked us up. My friend got in a lot of trouble and my parents never found out but we weren't doing anything anyway but staying out too late. Anyway, sorry for no pics. I don't think they had digital cameras back then.
I was kidnapped and carjacked once in a reasonably high-profile incident. After the kidnappers let us go, we got pulled over by the cops who still thought the kidnappers were with us. There were more guns pointed at us by cops then the kidnappers had!