In light of Shaun King’s diary about Martese Johnson (pictured above before and after his brutal arrest by Alcohol and Beverage Control Police in Charlottesvillle, Virginia), I have decided to come clean about a crime I committed when I was in my Freshman year of college at Colorado State University.
The year was 1974, and I was seventeen years old. My birthday is in late September, and school started in late August that year. At the time, Colorado had a law that allowed the sale of some alcoholic beverages to 18 year-olds, so long as the content of the beverage did not exceed 3.2% alcohol by volume. It was a Friday night and most of my fellow dorm mates were going out to the local 3.2% beer club for a night of drinking until – well, you know.
Unfortunately, a few weeks shy of my 18th birthday, I was too young to be admitted to that bar, but I desperately wanted to go and party with my buddies. Lucky me, a friend from my high school who was in the same dorm still had his temporary driver’s license (a non-picture ID) and he gave it too me. He even had the same first name as me – Steve. “Don’t worry,” he said, no one checks that closely.” So off I went for my first chance to join my new college friends for a night of drinking cheap, watery Coors’ beer, get drunk and maybe jack up my courage enough to talk to a girl or two.
Outside the bar/club I joined a line of students waiting to get in. My friend, the one who gave me the “fake ID” had already entered about a half hour before me, just to be on the safe side. When I reached the door to the club, I nervously handed over my “ID” to the bouncer. He looked at it and then at me.
“Is this really your name?” he asked shining a flashlight into my face.
“Yes,” I answered, of course it is.”
“Repeat it to me,” he said.
I’m, Steve …” and then I hesitated for a moment before I was able to get out the last name of my friend. He gave me one of those looks that meant Bullshit! but that’s not what he said next.
“You know this is a temporary license that’s expired.”
“I lost my photo license,” I lied. “It’s all I have.” By this time I was close to pissing myself, to be honest. Then, after examining the fake ID I’d given him once more, the bouncer asked me for the birth date of my friend. Damn, I thought. I hadn’t bothered to memorize that information. This was supposed to go off without a hitch. I asked the bouncer why he needed to know. Wrong response.
“This isn’t you, is it?” I continued to lie, but he pulled me out of the line with one hand and up against the outside wall on the other side of the door away from the line. I told him if he wasn’t going to let me in, then I was going to leave. He held up his arm to stop me. “Sorry, that isn’t our policy. You stay right here and don’t move.” I did what he said. He was after all, about twice my size, or so it seems looking back in time to that moment now. He spoke into a walkie-talkie to someone, probably his manager. Then he told me the police were on their way.
“What are they going to do with me?”
“That’s entirely up to them, but attempting to get into a bar with a fake ID is against the law. We could lose our license. That’s why we take these matters very seriously.” We didn’t speak after that. He went back to checking ID’s and letting kids go into the bar. I slunk against the outer brick facade wall and tried to make myself as a small as possible. I’d never been in trouble like this before. Never had any interactions with law enforcement. My heart was pounding. Was I going to go to jail? Would I get kicked out of school? What would I tell my parents. They thought of me as a super straight-arrow who did well in school, and had even been a National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist. Heck, I still attended church on Sundays.
About ten minutes later the police car showed up, and two officers got out. Both middle-aged white guys. They walked over and had a brief chat with the bouncer, and then they turned their attention to me.
“Okay kid, what’s your real name?” I was done lying. I told them. They asked if I had any real ID, and I pulled my driver’s license out. The one that showed that my 18th birthday was three week away. “Are you a student?” one of them asked. I nodded, told them I was a freshman and the name of my dorm. One of them left to confirm what I said. That took roughly another ten minutes. Meanwhile, I felt everyone in line was watching me. To say I was humiliated is an understatement. The cop who stayed behind with me asked if I aware I had broken the law? What could I say but yes. He shook his head. I felt sure I was going to be arrested.
The other cop returned. “He checks out,” was all he said. Apparently, he talked to my Residential Assistant for my floor, a tee-totaling Mormon. “Okay Steve, lets all get in the car, shall we.” They put me in the back seat. At that point I was grateful I hadn’t been handcuffed.
“You ever been in trouble with the law, before, Steve?” This was the cop sitting in the passenger seat. No, I told him, never. He asked me if I understood what I did was not only illegal, but stupid. “Hell, you turn 18 in just a few weeks. You should have just waited.” Yeah I said, I should have.
They backed the car out of the parking lot, and drove out onto the street that led back to the campus. “What’s happens now” I asked.
“Now? We’re going to take you back to your dorm.”
“You’re not going to arrest me?” I was surprised to say the least. The cops glanced at each other. I swear I saw one of them smirking, but maybe that’s just how I chose to remember this bit of my past.
“Not this time,” one of them said. “But we see you again trying to pull a stunt like this and next time you won’t get off so easy. You will be arrested. Understood?” I nodded, relieved, but that apparently wasn’t good enough.
“No,” the cop said, you need to tell me ‘I understand, officer, and it won’t happen again.’ Say it.” I repeated the line word for word, and that seemed to satisfy them. Shortly thereafter we pulled up to my dorm, and one cop opened the rear door and helped me out. “Have a good rest of your weekend,” he said, “and stay out of trouble.” Then he got back in and they left.
So, that’s my story. Not terribly exciting. No getting slammed to the ground and beaten bloody. No charges for resisting arrest or using a fake ID or anything else. As far as I know, no record of the incident was ever made. I got off scot-free. No harm, no foul. No arrest. And I made damn sure I waited until I was 18 before I went back to that bar.
Unlike Martese Johnson, nothing bad happened to me. Of course, I am white. The cops were white. Maybe that had something to do with it. By the way, like Martese Johnson, I would go on to become an Honors student and be accepted into the Colorado State chapter of Phi Beta Kappa (a non-residential, academic achievement society that has Greek letters only, so please don’t confuse it with the scum at Penn State or the University or Oklahoma).
I suppose I will never know if a black student at CSU back then would have been treated the same way I was for the same offense. I’d like to think so. But then, I see the picture of a bloodied Martese Johnson after his brutal beating, a kid who according to witnesses also did nothing that required such a brutal assault by the law enforcement officers of the Alcohol and Beverage Control police who arrested him, and I do wonder.
Actually that’s a lie. I don’t wonder at all.
