Thread by @ericwsundin, I got arrested when I was sixteen for possession of marijuana in [...]

I got arrested when I was sixteen for possession of marijuana in San Antonio, Texas. Here's what happened, and, if you read to the end, here's the effect it had on me.

I made the brilliant decision of smoking pot in a parked car (my parents' car) in a church parking lot with my friend. I was in the driver's seat and he was in the passenger. After about fifteen minutes, two or three SAPD cop cars arrive on scene.

We try to hide everything but there's not a whole lot of good hiding spots. A cop gets out of his car, approaches the passenger side window, and says, "What are you boys up to tonight?"

My friend quizzically responds, "Just listening to music--is that bad?"

"Depends--what're you listening to?"

In what can only be described as an earnest attempt to tell the truth on my part, I blurt out, "Pink Floyd."

"Get out of the car."

Not knowing any better, we complied. We put our hands on the hood of my parents' car as the cops probed the vehicle. It didn't take long for one of them to find a little bag of pot.

"Whose is it?" he asked.

It was mine, so I said it was mine. I was then handcuffed, put in the back of one of the squad cars, and my friend's parents were called to come pick him up.

On the way to the juvenile processing center, the arresting officer told me how this was sign from god (recall that I was arrested in a church parking lot) and that I would be a better person because of this experience.

We got to the processing center, I was fingerprinted, etc. (tbh a lot of that has been blocked out in my mind). At one point I'm sitting down, still in handcuffs, before being put in my own little holding cell until my parents come get me.

While I'm sitting there, I'm within earshot of my arresting officer's phone call to my parents. It's like 1am at this point. He literally tells my dad that he's ~proud~ of me and that he can personally vouch that I will learn from this experience and be a better "man" for it.

At some point I'm put in my own holding cell. I stay there for a few hours, then my parents arrive. On the walk out to my parents' car (their other car) it's silent until my dad facetiously asks,

"So what do you think of the criminal justice system?"

I said, "I don't." My dad laughed.

My parents grounded me for like three weeks, but made me go to the next evening's semester-end tennis team banquet so as to keep up appearances. A close friend tells me that he's jealous of me because I got arrested.

My parents were able to hire a highly respected San Antonio criminal defense attorney. I got a deferred, checked in with my probation officer once a month, pee'd in a cup a few times, and then it was all over.

Now, to many, the story of my arrest is funny. The church parking lot + Pink Floyd + the arresting officer's faith in me, etc., all culminate to an arrest that was void of any real trauma or terror beyond the inherent trauma/terror of an arrest at the hands of law enforcement.

And that was the lesson I took from that experience. That my arrest is in any way light-hearted was and is a privilege. I never feared for my life. I never feared for my body/health and I never feared that I wouldn't be picked up by mommy and daddy with all deliberate speed.

It's sad that it took me sixteen years and being arrested just to begin scratching the surface of just how fortunate I was directly because of any/all of the following: my race, my gender, my socioeconomic status, my parents, and the list goes on and on.

I credit my arrest with being one of the most formative reasons why I chose a career in criminal defense. Our "justice" "system" does not treat equals equally. My experience would be Exhibit A of that reality.

I was treated differently by police, by my high school's vice principals (who were notoriously tyrannical), and potentially even by my prosecutors because of factors I never earned, factors I was born into.

The opposite of that is true for so many--mistreated by police, mistreated by their school's administrators, mistreated by their community, generally, all for factors they were also born into and didn't themselves choose.

In hindsight, I'm so thankful that I have that experience, as it led me to where I am today. But even that is a huge privilege that can't be overstated. For all too many, one arrest is enough to have significant, lifetime ramifications. Even for pot possession.

We have to undo and reconstruct our entire way of thinking, if we're actually serious about real change. Like @LawProfButler said, the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to--it's not broken. We over-arrest and over-incarcerate for pointed, political reasons.

So we must be pointed and we must be political in solving this crisis. We must elect people like @elizaorlins to be district attorneys. We must change our vernacular from "criminal justice system" to "human caging" and "criminal punishment bureaucracy" like @equalityAlec.

We must scrutinize whether caging at all is beneficial to our society. We must consider whether our system of mass incarceration constitutes a New Jim Crow, as Michelle Alexander says it is.

And I agree.

We must ask ourselves whether it's a good thing that literally 31 states in our union would themselves lead the entire world in incarceration rate were they themselves independent nations rather than states--states, mind you, that are part of a nation that DOES lead the world.

Our system is radical already, and in the absolute wrong direction--so it's going to take radical resistance to undo it and to push it closer to something that is actually equal and actually just for all of us.

Because right now, so long as spoiled little white kids like me are treated with the kid gloves whereas other people are treated fundamentally different, we cannot lie to ourselves that we live in a society actually devoted to justice.

We don't.

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