March 11, 2024 Police Harassment at Silver Strand Campground, San Diego
Left Jack’s house at 7:20 PM, arrived campground 15 minutes later. Starting to back into RV parking spot when police car lights going on behind us so we stop and they start yelling at us to roll down the windows which we do. Then they say throw out your keys Then they say for both of us to put our hands outside the windows. After several minutes of them not saying anything, they tell dad to get out of the car and by now there are five police cars and helicopter circling overhead so it’s hard to hear what they’re saying. Dad faces them, and they yell at him to turn around backwards And back up slowly I’m still sitting in the truck but brought one hand inside and called Jack and put him on speaker and tucked the phone into my shirt so he could hear what was going on. I can’t tell what’s going on back there with dad. Later, he told me that they had two policeman with guns pointed at him as they were cuffing him and they cuffed him tight. The campers were all out of their campers watching. A camper women is talking to me saying what going on… I say no idea. She starts yelling at the police are you serious? What are you doing? These people are senior citizens and the police tell all the campers to get inside their campers. She and her husband get inside their truck which is right next to my window and keeps talking to me. Thank God Jack was on the phone with me to try and keep me calm. Then they yell at me, passenger get out of the truck and then I start walking toward them, then they yell at me turn around put your put your hands up walk back towards toward my voice. I get back there and see couple police with guns and they handcuff me behind my back and I start yelling. What are you doing? What are you doing? What’s going on? What’s going on! Jack is saying Mom calm down you’re going to make it worse. Police says it’s just protocol. It’s just protocol. You know we’ve got a report of stolen plates on the truck and just relax as this is just protocol and they patted me down, my pants pocket area and put me in the back of the police car alone and shut the door . The back area and seat is all hard plastic and I can’t sit back because it hurts my hands and arms. Thank God Jack was on the phone with me calming me down. I can’t see John. He’s in another car. I can see several police walking around the truck with flashlights, guns and must’ve been heat sensing gear because they were yelling get out of the truck get out of the truck . Lots of immigrants coming over boarder here so they thought someone was in it when it was only from the warm clothes in backseat that just came out of dryer! Ha! All this and the helicopter flying circles around us. Finally 20 year old police came over with wobbly hand holding a gun and started asking questions like what am I doing here? where did we get the plates. Then he goes away again and he comes back a little while later And says that they ran the plates and came up with them as beings attached to a different car and they ran the plates in 50 states and it came up that they were attached to a blue Mercedes. All sounded pretty fishy. Anyway they finally let dad and I go And said that they checked out the license and registration and insurance cards and everything that were in the truck and everything matched so they let us go. You know, if the freaking idiots had checked out the license registration and insurance cards right from the beginning, they would’ve known that it was our truck. Also, we realized afterwards that the problem was the license plate holder that advertises the car dealer you buy the vehicle from was covering up the fact that It was a Rhode Island commercial plate. They said it looked like a Baja license plate which means from Mexico. In the meantime I could see a bit at the end of the campground road, there were lots of police cars up there as well blocking the entrance to the campground in case we tried to make a run for it, which didn’t make any sense since there were five police cars surrounding us. Anyway come to find out that there had been a big accident there when a police car rolled over. It must have happened right after we pulled into the campground because it wasn’t there when we pulled in and it was there as soon as we turned around and noticed the police car was following us. The police stayed in the campground for many minutes all gathered talking to each other after they released us, and we got back into the RV. As we were unloading the truck with all the laundry we had just done at Jack’s, campers kept coming up to us saying are you all right? Are you all right? Do you need a glass of water? I said no I need a glass of wine. I was shaking like a leaf. Dad Navy training kept him cool and calm in the face of danger. He thought it was quite an exciting adventure! The women camper recorded it and gave us some clips. Most of them she had to delete because of their profanity.
Well, you gotta know that we were the talk of the campground . The next morning I was outside sitting drinking coffee in the warm sunshine when neighbors started to come over asking what was going on. If you need anything let us know. They were pretty worried about us. I was pretty worried about us too but was calm now and also thinking about it as an adventure. Poor Jack, hope he was able to sleep. The neighbor right across from us took videos and sent some to me. She said she had to delete most of them because of their profanity. Yes, she was ripping mad last night and yelling at the police a lot along with other campers . Her brother is a lieutenant in the San Diego Police Department and was on the phone the whole time. He recommends we put in a complaint because training issues in the police department need to be improved obviously. After they released us this camper went back to the police as they were gathered for quite a long time in the parking lot. He said the older cop was yelling at the others, telling them what poor job they did on how they handled it. Doesn’t make sense since he was there the whole time and didn’t stop it. Maybe he wasn’t there the whole time. Our neighbor was told that the reason they stopped us was because there was a hit-and-run at the entrance to the park, and they thought we were involved in it. as John suspected the whole license plate coming up as a stolen car was just a ruse to buy them time to check us out. That makes no sense as the cops said they were following us shortly after we left Jack’s. John saw that we were being followed that there was a car behind us as we were driving the half mile down the Park Road, but didn’t suspect it was a police car . Another neighbor came up to us who is a retired policeman and said that the way we were treated was way way off base and out of control and agreed that we need to file a complaint so that they can improve their protocol.
We didn’t file a complaint as I was concerned that we were notorious enough as it was. We would be back in San Diego again in the future and didn’t want to target us in anyway.
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