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I agree completely, Nancy.
I agree completely, Nancy. I was arrested at Mifflin in this way this year and I found it to be a humiliating, and not just an expensive experience. I'm 21, and a policeman came over and said he saw me taking a sip of my drink on the sidewalk. I really don't think I did, but I was not going to make things worse by appearing to resist arrest. I just politely said that I didn't realize I had done this (hoping that an apology would be enough). It didn't work. The policeman asked me to please put my drink down and put my hands behind my back. This was in front of all of my friends. I asked him if he could please handcuff me in front, because I would go with him willingly and I had had a dislocated shoulder a couple of years ago. This seemed to piss him off. I put my hands behind my back and this large man (I'm 5'3" and female) bound my wrists so tightly that I was in pain immediately. I remember thinking that this is something a rapist or a criminal would do to me, but it was being done by a police officer as punishment for a sip of a drink that may or may not have taken place in a specific location. So I was taken into custody, tied up in a painful fashion, treated like a prisoner, and publicly humiliated. The $290 fine was the least of it. This kind of treatment of law-abiding people can't possibly be necessary.