Legal Juice
Could there be a worse use of the one phone call you are allowed from jail? Okay, maybe if you made a bomb threat. But this is right up there. As reported by The Naperville (Illinois) Sun:
Carly A. Houston was taken to the Naperville police station over the weekend, after she allegedly became embroiled in a heated, early morning dispute with a taxicab driver.
A police officer dutifully supplied the 29-year-old Chicago woman with a telephone, instructing her she could make one call to find a relative or friend who could come to the station to post her bail.
Instead, Houston used her call to dial 911, which immediately connected her to Naperville police dispatchers. She pleaded for help, complaining she was “trapped inside the detention facility,” police said Monday.
Snap! Trapped in jail …
[This] earned her another criminal charge … for making a false 911 report.
It was not a good morning for Ms. Houston:
[Her] troubles began about 1:40 a.m. Sunday, when police were called to the BP service station at 901 N. Washington St., police Cmdr. Mike Anders said.
A cab driver there told police he had picked Houston up near the city’s downtown, and that she had instructed him to drive north on Washington Street, Anders said.
When the driver asked for her specific destination, Houston allegedly “yelled, screamed, cursed and extended (both) middle fingers at the cab driver and threatened bodily harm” against him, Anders said. He stopped at the gas station, where employees and patrons were also “alarmed and disturbed” by her reputed behavior, he said.