Immigration, Screw-Ups

San Diego Accidentally Locks Up Lawyer for Hours

San Diego accidentally detains a lawyer for hours. He's a little miffed.

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You know the line from Henry VI, Part II, where Dick the Butcher explains the need to “kill all the lawyers.” It’s a cheap laugh line playing on the timeless and cross-cultural hatred of lawyers. Only a profession as self-conscious and petty as ours would go out of its way to try and play this off as a hidden compliment from the Bard by stressing that the character who said it was up to no good. I guess Shakespeare was just a failure because everyone laughs at that line instead of recognizing the deadly serious threat to English stability.

Well, anyway, the San Diego Sheriff’s Office has a modern take and just “locks up all the lawyers” for no reason.

KVWN-TV Channel 4 Evening News…

Well, maybe not Channel 4. How about the Union Tribune:

A Vista lawyer spent nearly half the night locked up by mistake in a San Diego jail visiting room Tuesday, his shouts and pounding going unnoticed for hours.

Attorney Erubey Lopez said he went to the downtown jail to visit a client. He got a visitor’s badge and was escorted to the visiting room. He waited about half an hour, and no one came.

Lopez then used an intercom system to ask about the delay, but the system did not appear to be working. He spent more than four hours in the locked room before a guard discovered him and let him out, Lopez said.

Lopez got to the jail around 8:30 p.m., meaning the jail had him locked up until almost 1 a.m. Too bad he doesn’t work at a Biglaw firm, because all that time would be billable!

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Sheriff’s Commander John Ingrassia confirmed what took place, referring to it as “an unfortunate incident on our part.”

Lopez said he was angry about the incident and will file a formal complaint.

“I was really mad, and I try not to be mad about things like that,” Lopez said. “What if I had been sick or had heart issues?”

He tries not to be mad about things like this? How many “things like this” has he experienced? If it’s any more than, I don’t know, ZERO, then he should get plenty mad.

So what the hell is wrong with San Diego anyway? Remember when that kid was locked up by the DEA for days with no food or water? Well, that was in San Diego, too.

Can these people not tear themselves away from surfing long enough to realize they’ve locked up innocent men for hours or days on end?

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Answer: Have you seen those waves?

UPDATE (2:40 PM): Here’s a piece by the New York Daily News, which contains photos and also points out that Lopez had no cellphone because it had been confiscated upon his arrival.

Lawyer Locked Up, Forgotten in Jail Visiting Room [UT-San Diego]

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