Matthew Routson

Review of Ocean City Police Department

My friend had too much to drink and accidentally p...

My friend had too much to drink and accidentally picked up the wrong phone when he left our hotel pool bar. He had no idea he did it. Next day he was arrested By Officer Street for strategically planning a theft according to OCPD. Funny part is the phone was found in the SAME building where it was strategically taken, it was an old iPhone, and the screen was all cracked. It was an obvious mistake if my friend did pick up the phone. Our group of three that weren t arrested assisted the owners to find the phone. Officer Street searched our room for the phone that was being pinged through find my iPhone and the owner of the phone even said it wasn t in our room. We were not allowed to leave accord to Deputy Doofus because we were suspects but the funny part is they didn t frisk us to see if we were holding the phone. Officer Street said he would arrest us all if the phone was found in our room. The cops knew the phone was in the building, but said they weren t going to help find it. Here the hotel had the phone the whole time. The cops didn t ask where did you go after the bar which would have led them straight to the phone. The cops didn t search anywhere other than our room and didn t ask another person any questions other than my group. None of us had a clue our friend accidentally took the phone until he was being taken away in handcuffs. He was falling down drunk an hour before strategically taking the phone. It s now been 15 hours that they have been holding him and won t release him. The owners have their cellphone back. They said they don t want to press charges, yet here we are waiting for the police to release him. This place is a joke and always have had the worst cops who are interning during college and obviously don t have a clue what they are doing.

Update: Arresting Officer Street never gave my friend my phone number to call so he had to contact his dad to come pick him up who drove 4 hours through the night to get him. Turns out the victim didn t drop the charges. My friend spent $2000 on a lawyer who didn t do anything but show up for the court date and didn t request the video and only evidence that supposedly showed him taking the phone. Officer Street didn t show up to the court date, the victim didn t either, the prosecution didn t have the video that was supposedly the reason my friend got arrested. Still, the judge said he would postpone the trial for another date and up to a few times, rather than just end the trial over this farce. We still have no clue whether my friend actually took the phone or not, but rather than waste a few more days and countless hours of driving to OCMD he took a 40 hour community service to have his record wiped clean. This all could have been avoided had the victim talked to my friend and just said hey man you were drunk, I get it. Why don t we just go to Verizon/AT&T and you can buy me a new phone . Both sides would have been better off.