As a teenager I didn't always make the best decisions. I was smart, for sure, and had the grades and piles of precocious Po-Mo paperbacks stacked on my bedside table to prove it. I was even street smart, sort of, or at least I had the rap cd's and empty nickel bags of dirt weed bought in the ghetto to prove it. But every now and again I blew it. Case in point, the night we got busted for smoking weed at Dante Fascell Park.

Fascell was a U.S. Representative from Florida, who managed (among other fine achievement I'm sure) to salvage enough public park space in Dade County to get a park in South Miami named after him. We were 15 and looking for a place to get high, and my friend Rocky's parents had just got home. Talk about a love connection! Fascell's park and our plans were a match made in heaven.

We knew not to just sit in our cars passing around the bubbler; were too street savvy to just be sitting ducks for some asshole South Miami cops on the Wednesday midnight beat. Instead, we left the cars in the parking lot and walked past the tennis courts to one of the picnic tables in the far end of the park, between the canal and the swingsets. I think we were five or so, three guys and two girls. I remember one of the girls was my ex-girlfriend, and this was our first time hanging out since breaking up 6 months earlier.

The bubbler belonged to my friend Rick, who'd lent it to me the day before. I think I wanted to impress my ex, and my friend Sean had broke my own bowl earlier that week. Rick's pipe was impressive, a softball sized contraption of kaleidoscopic blown purple and green glass that held about a cup of water to cool the chronic smoke. Speaking of which, I was holding a half-eighter of nice crippie, bagged up securely in the cellophane wrap off a cigarette pack.

We sat at the bench for twenty minutes or so, smoking most of my weed, before one of the girls remembered a midnight curfew. I guess we must have been pretty high at one point, but the flashing blue lights in the parking lot sobered me up quick. On our way up, I stashed Rick's bubbler inside a Banyan tree. I could see two cop cars as we got close to the parking lot, one with lights on one without, and before they got a close look at us I dropped the cellophane bag with what was left of the weed.

The cops had our number.

"Where's the weed?" One asked as soon as our feet were on the asphalt of the parking lot.

"There's no weed, sir."

"Oh really? Where's the joint?"

"No joint, sir."

"Where's the chronic?" 

"Who's got the dope bag?"

The officer went on and on through the same routine, as if when he hit on some magical bit of slang we would suddenly succumb to his street prowess and confess. We didn't. Eventually they focused on the cars. One of them pointed at my old Red Explorer.

"Who's car is this?"

"Mine, sir."

"Ok, good. Do you mind if we look inside?"

I remembered the remains of the bowl Sean had broken, the pieces I had stupidly forgotten to throw away.

"Actually, officer, I don't consent to a search."

"Really? Well too bad."

Despite my refusal they searched the car anyway. Sure enough they found what I was worried about. Around this time two more police officers showed up on the scene. All were young and white, Cuban maybe. Two of them separated me from the group and told me I was in deep shit for the pipe in my car.

"There's residue in that bowl", they kept saying.

"That's posession and paraphenali, you're in some shit son."

The two cops dealing with me resumed their quest for our bag of dope, this time with an ace in the hole.

"Find us that weed or you're going to jail son. If you don't find us that weed we're taking you in."

I didn't know what to do. My NORML training had failed so far, as my refusal to consent to a search was rebuffed. And these guys really wanted something, I was scared to leave them empty handed. Since I couldn't find the weed anyway, I led them back to the Banyan tree and Rick's bubbler.

They were unimpressed.

"This is just another pipe, son. Now you're definetly going down for paraphenalia unless you find us some weed."

I started to think that maybe they just wanted to get high that night. I told them the truth about dropping the cellophane bag somewhere near the parking lot. We walked back up to the lot, where my friends and the other cops where, and they gave me a flashlight.

I walked around the parking lot, holding a giant police issue Maglite, and searching in vain for a tiny cigarette wrapper of weed while two cops loudly harried me, informing over and over again that I was going to jail if I didn't find some weed soon. It occurred to me that this was perhaps the most ridiculous moment of my life. I was hardly even scared anymore.

At one point, when I was about to give up, my friend Mary motioned with her shoe to the crumpled baggie of pot. Without too much thought, I picked it up and handed it over to the two officers. True to their word, they told me I'd done well. They dropped the bag back on the ground and told me to grind it into the asphalt with my sneaker.

"Now don't try and smoke your shoe."

Next they placed both bowls, Rick's bubbler and the one Sean broke, into a paper bag and told me to jump on the bag and crush the pipes. I'm sorry to Rick, but I didn't give much thought before I triumphantly bounced up and down, the glass gloriously crunching beneath my feet. The crunch of freedom.

Or so I thought.

Another squad car pulled in, and two more young South Miami cops strolled up to us. One of the cops who'd dealt with me walked away to speak with these two.

"No, no. We just got here." I overheard from one of the recent arrivals.

We were there for three more hours. The girls had their parents called to pick them up; the boys were each placed separately in the back of a squad car. The cops rotated from car to car in a pack. Whenever they got to me, they'd inform me that my friends said I was a drug-dealer, that I'd sold them all the drugs. When I protested that this wasn't true, they demanded to know why my friends were lying, and which one of them was the drug-dealer. Over and over again I pleaded that no one was.

At one point one of my friends became frustrated and protested. He demanded to know if he was being charged with something, and what the delay was. The two new cops took him out of the squad car and walked him a few feet into the park. They pointed at the tennis courts.

"You see those tennis courts?" They asked. "Well you're lucky. Because if you were a nigger we'd take you to those tennis courts and beat the shit out of you."

I believe it. At about 3am I saw my friends' cars pull out of the parking lot. I asked a cop what was happening. He told me I was going to jail for lying. Then he opened the door, pointed at my car, and told me to go home.

What happened to Skip Gates last week made me remember that night at Dante Fascell. We were vulnerable that night, because we were kids and were breaking the law. I think we got off easy. Truthfully, I would have taken being fucked with anyday over getting arrested.

But the feeling of powerlessness in the face of the law was humiliating and disheartening, even if we deserved it. I wonder how often African-Americans are subjected to treatment like this even when they're not breaking the law. I wonder how many have had the shit beat out of them on those tennis courts.