A few years back when I was on a trip to Canada with my brother, a border agent asked me to come inside after checking my Id. (An era where border agents have more info on people then people might know about themselves) A border agent wanted me to tell about the time back in the 70s that I was arrested in California. I actually could not remember being arrested in the 70s in CA and wondered what was up and had to sit there in the mean time until I could come up with an answer.
I eventually remembered that I was arrested in San Francisco in the fall of 1970, just after moving there after graduating from high school in North Dakota when I was accused by the arresting agents that I was selling marijuana. I was let out of jail a day later because what the FBI thought was marijuana, was not. I am not sure how much information the border agents have on this but the border agent either couldn't or wouldn't let me know what they knew. I was told that I would have to go back to the San Franciso Precinct and find out what was on my report there.
I later called the SF precinct and a person there also told me that I would have to come in person to get details about this. I drove to San Franciso later that year and I was told at the SF precinct that I had an arrest record by the FBI and was shown a printout of a report about that arrest. I forgot to ask for this report copy but remember it being stated that I confessed to being a marijuana dealer and some other drivel to fill out the report. I was told at the precinct that I had the option to pay the FBI around $80.00 to have this report removed from their records.
This didn't seem right that I should have to pay this extortion fee (my payment to erase a false report/record just because the FBI had the power and ability to make up any incriminating fabrication that they could come up with on anyone they pleased). I also had the thought that I would be paying to erase evidence that the FBI had given a false report on me in the case that I might wish to sue them some day.
The situation leading to this arrest came about one day after about my first week in the city where I came to attend the SF Art Institute. A young kid and his roommate were sitting on my hotel steps and asked me if they could hang out with me for the day because they were broke, kicked out of their hotel and were trying to regroup. We walked around North Beach for a while and then the younger guy (referred to as the kid) said that he was going to go by someone's place that owed him some money.
What I remember next as to being relevant about this case is the young kid showing up with a couple of narcs and a bag full of what he said was marijuana that his friend had given him and was attempting to make a sale to these narcs out of my room. They sampled some and left and at that point I told the kid that he had to take his bag of weed and leave. The kid instead blurted out that he couldn't take it right then and that he had to go do something first and then bolted out the door. His old roommate left also and I stayed in the room, I guess because I thought I had to be there to let these guys back in to get their bag of alfalfa.
Shortly after some agents showed up at my door calling me by my last name (I'm sure that they stopped by the Hotel desk to ask the name of the person living in the room I was in).
After confiscating the evidence the agents wouldn't let me get more then two words out of my mouth without them interrupting me. Their agenda seemed to be that anything that I might say would just be excuses to cover myself while it was apparent to them that I was a marijuana dealer.
I spent a night in jail and was let out the next day when I was told that incriminating evidence tested negative. How sad! I walked back to my hotel and one of the agents that arrested me was just leaving my hotel. He asked me if I had seen the kid. They apparently remet with their narc buddies and finally got the story straight. I was expecting an apology but instead got a false report from them saying that I admitted to being a "marijuana dealer". I suppose they sent this false report off to headquarters on the day they arrested me as it doesn't seem like they would have done this after they figured out what the situation really was.in any case I wasn't aware of this report for most of my life and I think it explains why I could never get a job with the post office or any decent company that I applied at and might have had some future with. I had assumed that I didn't have any record like this as I thought of this incident as a false arrest/bad mistake and eventually forgot about it.
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