The best laid plans. . . or my adventures with the German police

Rio has been out of school sick this week.  Yesterday the doctor said he cannot return to school until Monday.  The only meeting on my schedule today was for evening.  So last night I felt justified in staying up quite late chatting online with Marika in the US, knowing I would not have to set an alarm and planning to sleep in today and eventually blog a few of my thoughts on the refugee situation.

Unfortunately the best laid plans often go a bit awry. . .

and so it was that at 6:40 I was awakened, not by an alarm clock but by the door buzzer.  I initially ignored it, after all who rushes to answer the door at that time of morning?  As the buzzing continued for one minute, then two, then three that familiar dread set in and I assumed that my landlady had decided to start harassing us again.  The buzzing continued, and eventually I dragged my reluctant self out from under the covers, threw on my robe and glanced out of the window.  I was relieved to see that it was not my landady but also alarmed to spy three policemen (as well as their car and my neighbors trying to get out of their garage around the car).

Rushing down the stairs, various scenarios flooded my mind.  Was the neighborhood being evacuated due to some toxic spill on the nearby autobahn?  Had something horrible  happened to David or Marika and word was coming to me via the local police?
One scenario which did not cross through my mind in that mad dash to the door was being served with a search warrant on suspicion of theft!  Seriously, if you had asked me to list 100 reasons why police might be at my door, that would not have been on it.  And yet, there I was trying to keep my robe on straight, unbrushed teeth and hair, three officers coming in with paperwork telling me we are suspected of stealing a cell phone and they were going to search my house.

It doesn't look like much, but that little piece of paper carries a lot of weight

(and I wasn't about to take photos of officers here, so that is about the only picture I could think of to break up the text in this post)

Not really knowing the protocol for being served with a search warrant, I was offering the officers seats and coffee, opening blinds and turning on lights so we could see, and trying to wake my mind up enough to follow what they were saying.  Something about some town I am not familiar with, and a phone being stolen from the train station there.  I was fixated on not even knowing the town and asking where it was and the officer was fixated on trying to explain to me that records show I have a teen son and parents often don't realize what their kids are up to and they just needed to search for it since it was last used on the day it was stolen from our IP address.

I thought they said this happened on the second and I pulled the calendar down, wanting to double check my memory that all of us were still in the US on the second (which ought to be easy enough to prove) and then I heard it happened JULY 2nd.  Just as I was flipping back to see where we might have been that week, the name of the cell phone's owner got mentioned and suddenly things started to make at least a little bit of sense--it's Marika's best friend, a wonderful young lady we all love, one who is here so often the guest room is often referred to as her room.  The phone appeared to have been stolen when she was on her way home from spending the night with us and luckily  Marika had written her name down on our calendar when they made plans for her to be here so that made it obvious we really do know her.  It is an unusual name and the fact that it had been written there prior to the officers' arrival did set off some light-bulbs for them as well and the tone took a rapid change, thank goodness.

I still had to awaken Rio and he was questioned.  His cell phone was removed from its case the the serial number checked and the two officers (the third was apparently a witness).  Both his room and Marika's were searched a bit as well as the hall closet and many spaces in the living room.  We were told that under normal circumstances they would have to go through EVERYthing, but since there was clearly a little bit of a mix up since we knew the person whose phone it was, they were just checking more obvious places and not putting us through a full search and the ensuing mess.  Thank goodness for that (and I should explain the officers were kind and professional throughout; I don't fault them).

Half an hour later the officers and witness left, leaving me a copy of the search warrant and results that I had had to sign and instructing me to go down to the station in the afternoon with my IDs (I wasn't clear on why).

Left alone, the first thing I did was email David and ask him to call when he got up.  I was fairly shaken up by all this and just wanted to hear his voice.  I only ask him to call from his work travels two or three times a year, but today qualified as one of those times.  And next, of course, I messaged the friend and asked her to call me (and then I posted on facebook--which may seem strange but it felt like talking to someone and I wanted to talk to someone).

Having spoken to the young lady whose phone is missing, and combined that with what I understood of what the officers said and what is written in the warrant, this is the best I can piece together:

Our friend spent the night here and left late the next morning.  She was logged into her skype account while here.  She rode her bike to the train station, took the bike on the train (as she usually does), had used her phone on the train (so knows it was with her when she left), put it in her bike basket and once arriving at her destination (this town I am not familiar with but nearish where she lives.  Maybe this is where her boyfriend lives?  I honestly do not know why she was there, though the police asked me this afternoon to try to explain that. which seems odd).  As she was leaving the train station a crowd jostled her and ran into her and after that she found her phone was missing.
Her boyfriend looked up her skype account and saw a log in from an IP address that they did not recognize that evening, so when she went in to police to report the theft they took the IP address, assuming the log in was from the phone.
I should take this time to point out that I do NOT fault the friend at all for any of this.  It makes sense to report the theft and also to have looked for possible information and share that with the police when reporting.  She's a great girl and felt horrible about this whole thing, which is silly as it is not her fault at all.

What bothers me a bit though is that it would seem that ALL it took for a police officer to ask for a search warrant on our home and a judge to agree and issue it was one person reporting a 179€ missing cell phone and bringing in an IP address that had logged into the skype account shortly after the phone is believed to be missing.  No one even called her after tracking down the owner of the IP address to ask if she had been in our town or knew anyone here.  No one spoke to us.  There was no call made  from the phone traced back to us after it was taken.  Presumably, no one looked at the history to see that she often visited us and our IP address would show up on her records pretty frequently.
One missing phone, worth less than 200€ and one piece of information about a skype account log in found by the people making the report (not the police, as I understand it--perhaps they verified this and I was simply not told) and that is enough to issue a warrant for a full search of our home?  That just feels like a little much, you know?  I am surprised and saddened to learn that apparently so little is needed in Germany to send police over on a search.  And had Marika not written her friend's visit down on the calendar, then I suppose we would have been subjected to a full and intrusive search (which would not have turned up anything, no I do not have anything to hide, but that does not make it pleasant to have people going through everything including your underwear drawer and then have to put it all back away again after).

And I started to wonder, had they come on Monday when Dave was heading to the airport, would he have been allowed to leave or would he have had to miss a 500€ flight while the search for a 179€ phone took place?  Had Rio not been sick, would he have been allowed to go to school on time, or would he have missed first period while his room was searched and he was questioned?

Even with really nice officers who seem to realize there must be a mistake somewhere, it feels awful to be under such suspicion.  To have to go into the station to make a statement (that was what the meeting was for) and sign that statement even though I did not understand fully and completely every single German word in it (legal terms relating to theft, pleas and warrants are a definite hole in my vocabulary, though the officer did try to explain to me and I did not press it much, at the time I thought I would leave with a copy at least and I do trust that he is representing things fairly) and to be told I cannot even have a copy of what I signed, legally I apparently have no right to a copy (which feels odd to me), to know that there is a file out there, probably in duplicate or  triplicate at at least two precincts which shows we were suspected of a crime to such a level that a warrant was issued, it just feels crummy and unsettling and here it is past 6 pm and I have not quite gotten over the shakey feeling yet.    Maybe part of that is because even though the friend called and emailed the officers to explain it was not us and she had been here earlier but we were not at the station where her phone was taken, the officer who took the report is on vacation and until she returns my understanding is that  the case is open and we are still technically under investigation and suspects.

I don't know.   One thing I can say, I will be happy when it is all over and I hope we get something in writing saying it is closed and we are no longer suspected of anything--it would make me feel better to have something.  And I think about how shaken up I am, and I think about the big story going around yesterday--in which a 14 year old who built a clock and took it to school to show a teacher was handcuffed and arrested and initially charged because it looked like a "fake bomb" to someone at school and I wonder how shaken that poor kid was.  Thank goodness no one put handcuffs on me.  No one arrested or charged me.  The officers were very polite and nice at all times.  What must it feel like to be 14 and accused of much worse than taking a phone, and suspended and handcuffed and taken away from school in a squad car?

The police do a lot of good hard work both in the US and Germany and I think most are good people trying to do an important job.  I hope no one reads this and thinks I feel otherwise.  But it sure feels awful when them doing their job results in good people being searched or worse (and yes, in the US we have many examples of that small but significant percentage who are drawn to the profession for all the wrong reasons and need to be removed from forces or retrained and not ever protected as sometimes happens--but that is not what this post is about--this is just about my experience today and how crappy that feels and how much worse it must feel to be treated in any way less polite and respectfully than the police treated me today and how badly I feel for anyone who is regardless of how valid or not the reasons were).

--Hadley