Client: I just finished my training today for my new job as research assistant and it is going to be very intense for sure. I had to run until exhausted to de-compress these last two days. I have to be a researcher and not a counselor and that will be challenging for me.

When we learned that many cops do not arrest the girls in exchange for sex or other sexual favors, it brought back an extremely negative experience I had in 2001 with a bad cop on a power trip. This cop arrested me on New Years when I was there with my whole family and friends. I think I was traumatized. That night when I went outside to get air, he started flirting and asking me to come over to him by the balcony fence. When I rejected his ‘nice cop advances’ and wouldn’t, he said he could arrest me for being drunk and disorderly. I said he couldn’t (I was drunk, but not incoherent by any means) but then I smirked and called him a rent-a-cop and maybe a few other disrespectful things. BIG MISTAKE!! He got the bouncer to kick me out of the club or not allow me back in, and when I asked the bouncer to let me go in to let my family know I had to leave, he said no and that I had to go with the police officer. I was terrified, but kept saying that the cop could not arrest me for not doing anything illegal. He taunted me and then said, “watch me.” He arrested me for trespassing and disorderly conduct. I was hysterically crying when he put me in handcuffs and took me to the squad car and in the back seat. I was scared he was going to take me and rape me or who knows what. When I was crying saying I was a guidance counselor and that he was going to ruin my career, he called a friend and started laughing, taunting and mocking me. He stuck the phone in my face while I was crying and laughed and said this was his New Year’s fun.

To make matters worse, he made up a name and address on the police report saying I had given him that info when we got to the jail. Because I was booked under a different name, my parents could not find me in the jail and they went from jail to jail looking for me. I had to stay all night and they would not let me call anyone. In the morning they took me to the prison where I had to get strip searched. I was hysterically crying and screaming because I was so scared and mortified that this was happening to me. The other girls were so nice and kept telling me it was going to be ok and that it was not so bad in there. They kept asking me why I was crying so much, but I couldn’t talk I was crying so much. After a few hours they finally let me call my parents and they came with my boyfriend at the time, who was with my parents.

I have been crying a lot tonight because this all came back. I felt so powerless and I HATE that asshole cop. I filed a report at internal affairs and they said there was insufficient evidence, and nothing ever came of it. Every time I get fingerprinted for a job I need to explain this awful experience.

Remembering this is also helping bring out that anger and rage towards the male-run or dominated society.  I also am mad at myself that I let this asshole upset me so much and that I let him have so much control over me emotionally. When I see cops now I get very nervous and almost break into a sweat.

I had to get this all out and writing in my journal was not enough. I wanted to let you know that the training had triggered all this.

Thank you so much for being there for me.