The Police in South Carolina & Why I Avoid That State Like It's the Plague

If you live in South Carolina and you do not have any police officers in your immediate family, I apologize for what I must say about your home state. Police officers, yes, police officers. Having lived my life not only obeying the laws of the land, but also supporting my local police departments it comes with great distress that I must blame the police for my feelings regarding an entire state. Besides driving through South Carolina to get to Georgia or Florida, I have only visited this state one time in my life. That was all it took.

Basic Background Information:

Having worked in door-to-door sales, prior to visiting South Carolina I have only had the police called on me once. When I was working in Maryland and the police officer only wanted to know what I was doing; then he left me alone.
At the time of this South Carolina incident, I was twenty-four and one of the top salespersons in the country for an encyclopedia company. I was a manager who trained salespeople and put them out into the field each night. I also sold the product as that was where the bulk of my income came from.

The company opened a special experimental office near Washington D.C. This office included some of the top people from the surrounding areas. We were to try a new sales approach where we did not have to memorize a specific sales pitch, but to customize it to our personalities. This approach worked very well.

The newest office, in Charleston, South Carolina was struggling, so the company decided to send our office down there to help them out. The whole experience was a nightmare!

Crossing the Border into South Carolina:

As we carpooled down there and I was the most seasoned traveler, I was the lead car. The last car was a beat up old compact car, a Chevette to be exact. Because the Chevette was so slow, I had to keep popping over to the passing lane to make sure I could still see her.

Right as we were crossing the state line into South Carolina, I was in the midst of trying to find her back there when a couple of drag racers sped by. It just so happened that a police officer caught them on radar. The police officer pulled the Camaro and Mustang over and me too. Here I am driving a ford escort, leading a carpool with a rickety old car slowing us all down, and this guy is accusing me of drag racing with the other two cars!

I was in shock. I was also in tears, but that has nothing to do with the facts. I told the officer that I was not speeding, that I couldn't have been speeding, because I was carpooling with a car that couldn't even go the speed limit. He told me that he'd witnessed me racing in and out of traffic alongside of the other two cars. I said that I was indeed in the passing lane trying to find the tail end car in my carpool and that when those two cars flew by, I had to jump back over to get out of their way. He gave me a ticket anyways.

Had this been the only incident involving the police of South Carolina, I would have spent three times the amount of the ticket in order to travel back there to prove my innocence on principle.

Everyone's Getting Arrested?!?

The next day, we went into the company's office in Charleston, South Carolina. The first thing I noticed was the girl who won the award for the top new salesperson at the conference in Baltimore. She was white as a sheet and she was shaking. Honestly, she was visibly shaking.

A few of us pulled her aside and asked her what was going on. She could barely speak; she was so traumatized. She clued us in on why the office was having so much trouble getting started up.

She said that the police have been arresting people from their office every night and that the company will not bail them out. She had spent the previous night in jail and she wouldn't talk about her experience because it was too much for her to deal with. She showed up at work because they relocated her and she had no choice.

After the sales meeting, our group talked to several of the other salespeople from the Charleston office who each confirmed that at least one person from their office finds themselves in jail each night. Some of those salespeople had theories as to why the police have been harassing them. They talked about the fact that Charleston is not a high crime area, but there are several different police forces patrolling the same areas. They believed there were too many police officers with nothing to do. Charleston, South Carolina has city, county and state police all within a small area.

We were also warned that the laws in that county were written in such a way that you can be trespassing and not even know it. Basically, anyone can tell you to leave a property. It doesn't have to be the owner of the property, it can be any citizen and if you don't immediately leave, you can and will be arrested. Several of the salespeople there had been arrested without even being told to leave, because the person calling the police told them whatever they wanted to tell them. Some of the victims believed it was like a sport for some people.

You hear these kinds of stories from people and you just don't believe them. It is just not possible.

She Tried to Run Me Over:

Because those of us from Washington D.C. did not know the area, we were placed into the field like regular salespeople. We did not have access to our vehicles and we had to wait for someone to pick us up at the end of the night.

I was placed into an apartment complex. At the third door, I was told to leave the property and since that person was just a renter, I ignored them. I kept going. Had the person who asked me to leave been the owner or the manager, I would have found a way to leave.

Five minutes later, the manager comes running up to me and tells me that if I don't leave immediately, she's calling the police. I tell her okay, and then I leave. I'm walking along the road, and I can see a second apartment complex just up the road. I walk over there.

Ten minutes later that same manager comes up to me in her car. She's yelling out the window that this is her complex too and that she's already called the police and that since I have been warned against trespassing, that she was going to run me over with her car if I didn't leave, and leave fast!

Well, I am not the type of person to allow someone to walk all over me, so I decided she was not going to force me into a run. I walked, but soon found out that I had better be walking on the grass because she bumped me with her car. That only made her angrier. She began yelling at me to get off of her grass, that I had to walk on the road, but I ignored the crazy woman with the big pushy car. I walked on the grass until I got to the main road. She continued to follow me until I walked across the street to a shopping center.

I was shaking by that point, afraid for my life. Suddenly those stories didn't sound so far fetched!

The Police Had Me Surrounded!

I walked into a restaurant and got a glass of sweet tea to relax and then I walked back over to the shopping center to get on the phone. I called my husband, who was my fiancé at the time, and told him everything that had happened. While I was on the phone with him, a police car pulled up to the curb next to me. The police officer got out and told me to hang up the phone.

The officer asked me for my drivers license and then he wrote down all the information from it. He told me that I had been warned against trespassing and that there were witnesses that I ignored that order. I told the officer what happened, and that I had no way of knowing that the second complex was owned by the same person. I thought that satisfied him because he told me he wasn't going to arrest me "right yet."

I was wrong. He continued after a short pause, a pause that allowed me a sense of hope. My hope was crushed quickly and expertly. This is when he informed me that I was not allowed on ANY residential property for the rest of my stay in South Carolina, and that if I was found on ANY residential property in that state, I would be immediately arrested. Another brief pause to allow the full effect of his next words come into being. This officer then told me that I had nowhere to go because the shopping center was surrounded by residential property. He raised his arm and began pointing out the police cars. At each entrance to the shopping center, there were two police cars and several cars were circling the parking lot.

The police had me surrounded. They were waiting for me to leave the shopping center in order to arrest me. Can you believe that? There were literally 15 police cars willing to sit it out and wait for little 'ole me to leave that property!

I Escaped...Or Did I?

My friendly police officer got back into his car and pulled over into a parking space where he could watch my every move. After taking a moment to catch my breath, I called the phone number to the office, and lucky for me, the office hadn't closed yet. This entire episode happened so early in the evening that the office was still open.

The Vice President of the company was in the office trying to make the whole thing work there in Charleston and he told me to just wait right where I was and he was going to "show those cops a thing or two."

The Vice President of my company showed up in his brand new red Jaquar convertible to pick me up. The look on my friendly police officer's face was priceless. I eagerly hopped into the car and held back my tears as I explained to the Vice President of the company that was paying for me to be there that I was too shaken up and needed to go back to the hotel for the night.

He had a different opinion. I was told that I was not to give in to the cops and go right back out, and he told me he was going to take me far away, on the other side of town. I insisted that I didn't want to go, but I really didn't have any choice.

I Threw Myself on the Mercy of a Complete Stranger:

I was dropped off at a trailer park on the other side of town. I was upset. It was still daylight and I didn't want to stand there by the road, so I did my job. I got a few people who answered their doors, but only one friendly face. He was single and had no use for encyclopedias.

I had been there twenty minutes when I saw a police car cruising through the park. I ran and hid behind someone's shed. I started to cry. Seriously, I was very upset. The police car wasn't going anywhere; he just kept circling the park. I knew he knew I was there and I was too afraid to keep darting behind sheds and stuff so I made a bold move and ran over to that one guy, the friendly face's trailer.

I knocked on his door and asked if I could use his bathroom. He said yes. As soon as I got in the door I fell to the floor crying because it was the first time I felt safe in hours. I threw myself on the mercy of this complete stranger. I told him what had happened and he started cussing about so-called southern hospitality. He was in the military and not from around there and he was fed up with the attitudes he'd been getting from the locals. Friendly face offered to take me back to my hotel, and although I would never have done so in any other circumstance - I accepted his offer.

Leaving, Never to Return:

When I got back to the hotel, I called my husband and told him I was on my way home. I left a message at the front desk for my regional manager, who came in from Washington D.C. with us, that I was quitting and why. I called my co-worker's nanny, who was upstairs in the same hotel, to let him know I was leaving and to pass that information on when his employer called to check up on her baby. I packed up and left and never went back.

This is a true story without embellishment. Everything happened exactly as told. It has been 17 years and whenever I have traveled, and forced to drive through South Carolina, I take certain precautions. I always drive at least five miles an hour under the speed limit and I never pass anyone. I make sure I have eaten and filled my gas tank prior to entering South Carolina because I refuse to spend a penny in that state ever.