Orlando man arrested for fighting off burglars
December 26th, 2007
Reverse Santa Clauses in Florida. Arif Sameja was over a friend’s apartment when he heard a commotion from his place and found burglars trying to make off with his stuff.
“One of the (suspects) ran out and tried to punch me,” Sameja said. “He hit me a couple of times, and I punched him in the face. He tried to run out of the apartment and I had a bat so I turned around and hit him in the back of the head.”
Deputies arrived as Sameja and one of the suspects were running down stairs.
Sameja, bat in hand, was handcuffed and put into the back of a deputy’s cruiser. By the time deputies realized they cuffed the wrong guy, the bad guys were gone. They’re still on the run.
My own experience with the Orlando police wasn’t terribly positive, either. My van was broken into in a hotel parking lot, and the officer who arrived to take my report flat out accused me of lying in my statement because he suspected that I had been elsewhere when the window was smashed in and I waited to report it until I returned to the hotel because I didn’t want anyone knowing where I had been or what I had been doing.
How did Officer Sherlock deduce this? Because there wasn’t enough glass on the ground. He tried real damn hard to get me to change my story, and when I was very careful and particular about what I knew and what I did not know (because I hadn’t been there to see the break-in) he started telling me that if evidence showed that I was lying things would not go well for me, and that the evidence he saw said I was lying. When I wrote up the report exactly as I had earlier stated it to him, he was beside himself. He went on and on about how my report was a sworn statement and that lying about where I had been and what I knew was a chargeable offense. I said I was aware of that, which was why I had been very careful to tell the exact truth as I knew it in my write-up. He just about went bonkers.
Then, later, when the hotel manager said that he had had a worker sweep up the broken glass the officer just shrugged and said “Oh, well, that explains that, then,” and basically up and left. I think he had been hanging around hoping to find out something else that he could nail me for.
Tags: FL
