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Teens Locked In Police Van For 14 Hours After Party Raid
By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 29, 2011
Modified Mar 29, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 29, 2011
Modified Mar 29, 2011
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It's an adolescent rite of passage: one minute you're doing rips off a beer bong and pogoing to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones at a raging house party, the next minute you're getting loaded into a police van and left for dead somewhere in Fort Lee, New Jersey. We've all been there! But you never forget your first time: a group of five teenagers say they were rounded up after cops raided their house party at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, then locked inside a van outside police headquarters for 14 hours.
"It was the worst thing that ever possibly happened to me," one boy tells WNBC. "The cops were pretty aggravated because it was a pretty big party, so we didn't want to say anything to the cops to make them more angry. So we just stayed quiet until we were told to do something." But they say there were never told to do something, and they had to huddle together for warmth as temperatures dropped overnight to 26 degrees.
The teens say they tried to escape by making a lasso out of shoelaces (?), heating a metal bar with a cigarette lighter, and kicking on the doors. Meanwhile, their parents were making frantic phone calls to try to determine the boys' whereabouts. It wasn't until Saturday afternoon that they finally got a cop's attention outside headquarters. By then the air in the van was ripe with the scent of urine from where the boys were forced to relieve themselves. Time served!
WNBC doesn't say whether the teens were handcuffed during their vanishment, and we're waiting to hear back from the Bergen County prosecutor, who is conducting an internal investigation. But this much goes without saying: some of the parents are considering filing a lawsuit. And the incident has already generated some insightful discussion over on the cop message board NYPD Rant, where one ranter asks, "They were confined right? What's the problem? I don't remember any requirements in the Bill of Rights that say you have to be comfortable while in confinement. They were a hell of a lot more comfortable than the guys living in boxes on top of the subway grates."
Tagged
bergen county
fort lee
new jersey
police van
teens
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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