Not too long ago I was detained by police for about ten minutes. For nine of those minutes, I assumed that I was going to be spending the night (at least) in jail. I was handcuffed, and told in official-sounding language that I was being detained on suspicion of B&E. This had never happened to me before, and I was perhaps a bit dazed, so I didn't distinguish between being detained and being arrested. This happened in Canada.

Only in retrospect does it seem amazing that, within fifteen to twenty minutes, on a weekend evening, half a dozen police showed up to pounce on one poor guy who'd wandered onto a construction site through some security fencing which had been blown down by wind.

When, after fifteen or twenty minutes, I emerged from the building, I saw a guy in a hoodie standing by the gap in the fence. My first thought was, "Another would-be explorer, less intrepid than I! Maybe I'll tell him to go ahead and enjoy himself." As I approached him, I guessed on second thought that perhaps he was affiliated with the site in some way, and was sizing me up, wondering if I belonged there. As I passed by him on my way out, I said something like, "Hey, how's it going." He said something like "Good, thanks." I was a several steps down the street before he said:

"Stop. Police."

I stopped and turned, as the guy in the hoodie came towards me.

Ah well. It had to happen some day.

"Drop the umbrella," he said. I dropped the umbrella, as he took one of my hands and bent my arm behind my back. Was he going to frogmarch me, or force me to the ground? I was getting ready to tell him how unnecessary that was when I realized he was handcuffing me.

He asked if I knew why I was being detained.

I said, "Yeah, I can imagine."

He said it was because a person matching my description, carrying an umbrella like the one I was carrying, had been seen on security cameras committing a B&E on this property. I didn't argue. Carrying my umbrella for me, he escorted me up the block, saying some things into his radio about having apprehended a suspect. I said, "You'll at least vouch for me that the fence was down?" He didn't say anything, but led me to where a few other (uniformed) police were standing around, two of them young, one of them older.

He leaned my umbrella against the wall of an adjacent building and told me to stand there. He asked if I had ID on me. Yes, I said, in my front left pocket. I told him he could take my wallet out. He wrote my name, address, phone number in his notebook. Then he gave me a rote legalistic speech that I didn't quite absorb (I supposed I was being "read my rights"), but it must have gone something like this:

"I am detaining you for suspicion of B&E. It is my duty to inform you that you have the right to retain and instruct counsel in private without delay. You may call any lawyer you want. There is a 24-hour telephone service available which provides a legal aid duty lawyer who can give you legal advice in private. This advice is given without charge and the lawyer can explain the legal aid plan to you. If you wish to contact a legal aid duty lawyer, I can provide you with a telephone number. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, I think I mostly understand all that."

"What part don't you understand?"

"I guess the gist is that if I want to call a lawyer, you can provide me with a number."

"Yes, and that you're being detained for suspected B&E."

"Right, yes."

"Do you want to call a lawyer?"

I told them that I'd never been in this position before, and asked them if they could or would tell me if in their opinion I needed to call a lawyer. The older one said, "I can't even answer that."

"Right, I understand."

"'Potentially,'" he said, putting air quotes around this word -- potentially, he told me, I could be charged for breaking and entering, but it would depend on some things, like (possibly) whether or not any damage had been done, and whether the owner of the property would want to press charges, and so on. (This is all very approximate. It's amazing how quickly we forget the exact words of a conversation.) He wasn't trying to reassure me, but rather, I think, emphasize how perilously unpredictable my immediate future was. Nevertheless, I think I was somewhat reassured. I said I'd certainly welcome an opportunity to explain myself to the owner.

All over the lower mainland, he said, on construction sites like this, property owners were losing tools and all kinds of valuables to theft, so I could understand that they might be a little ... "Nervous," I said. Right.

The cop in the hoodie asked again if I wanted to call a lawyer.

No, I said, I didn't think I needed to call one just yet.

"Also I should tell you that you are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say may be given in evidence."

I said I understood that.

He had half returned my wallet to my pocket, and now slid my ID in on top of it. Announcing what I was doing, I reached around and pushed the wallet more securely into my pocket.

The cop in the hoodie said, "On the way over here, you wanted to draw my attention to the fact that the fence was down."

Yes. And I said that I hadn't noticed any No Trespassing signs, though I admitted that there probably were some.

He asked, What were you doing on the site? I said that, since the fence was down and the site appeared pretty quiet, I didn't think I would hurt myself or anyone else if I went inside and looked for an open door. I found an open garage door at the back of the property, and went inside. I wanted to see if I could get a view from the roof. I climbed the stairs to the top (nineteenth) floor and enjoyed the view from a couple of balconies, then came back down. (For some reason, I decided not to admit that I had in fact climbed up onto the roof through a hatch and enjoyed that view too.) I think I left it implicit that I hadn't taken or disturbed anything. I quite obviously wasn't carrying any power tools.

One of the other cops said that I was lucky the wind hadn't blown me off. Another, at some point, said that it was too dark to get any view. I said that the view of downtown was nice even at night. Another, at some point, said that walking into construction sites was a good way to get bit, or arrested. (I assumed he was talking about guard dogs, not police dogs.)

"Well, I've never had either of those things happen before. Not that I make a habit of this," I added quickly.

The cop in the hoodie asked where I had been coming from, where I had been going. He asked if I had been drinking, or taken any drugs. He asked if there was anything sharp in my pockets, and patted them. "What's this?" "That, oddly enough, is a bottle of honey." I had a bottle of honey in one pocket; a lady on the street had given it to me in exchange for some coins to make a phone call. The cop didn't ask. He told me to remain here with his partner (there were two of them), then he walked away.

Two minutes went by, during which, wanting to broadcast my genial, law-abiding sanity, I made small talk with the two young uniformed cops standing there with me. "How's your night going?" "Not bad; just started a night shift." One of them asked me if I had plans for tonight. I laughed, still thinking that the answer to that question obviously depended more on them than on me.

The cop in the hoodie came back, asked to see my ID again, took it out and put it back, then he and the older cop told me how dangerous what I had been doing was. I didn't have a light, it was a dark building bristling with hazards (I paraphrase), if I got locked inside no one would find me until Monday morning, etc. I told them that I had been very careful; then I said, "Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt." (All I should have said was, "You're right. I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry." I did at least refrain from making a speech about victimless crime; and luckily I didn't say anything like "I'm always very careful every time I do this.") They told me that they had been about to send in a dog to sniff me out, since they couldn't search the whole building. Meanwhile, the cop in the hoodie removed the handcuffs. The older cop, in conclusion, said that the bottom line was that even though there was a gap in the fence, the fence had been put there for a reason. The cop in the hoodie said, I hope you'll make smarter decisions in the future. I said something lame like, I certainly won't look the same way at a fallen fence again. Then I was free to go. I apologized for the trouble, and thanked them for being so decent about it. Then I walked away down the street, pretending to be just another inconspicuous pedestrian, until gradually I became one.