Full Authority to Arrest and Detain
by Mark Ifanson
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
When Bennie got out of his second Detention, he used the small savings he had scraped together while working at Tommy’s Tacos to put a deposit on a crummy room and purchase another old bike, the one he customized with the raccoon tail.
He found that riding around all day pleased him, and he got really good at making broad ovals, circles, and figure eights, and fantasizing about all the bike stunts he would do if he only knew how. So, on the day Patti and Carl were watching Bennie in the shopping mall parking lot, Bennie was one happy bike-riding dude.
Wanting to challenge himself, Bennie started to run a more elaborate imaginary slalom course around some of the parked commuter cars, going faster and faster with each attempt. His Guidance-induced tech aversion kept him from tracking his improvement, but he could feel himself getting steadily better. He was also starting to fatigue from so much physical effort on a hot day, but he was happy, and he ignored the fatigue and kept pushing himself to go faster.
“What the hell is that little spit-wad doing anyway?” Carl asked. “He just keeps racing around those cars like he’s on drugs or something. Think we could bring him in on a drug charge?”
Patti paused and sighed to herself before responding. “No, Carl. No one cares if someone like Bennie is taking drugs. As long as he’s not dealing, and no one gets hurt, the DA won’t prosecute. They won’t even run the blood tests. We’ll be the ones getting lectured not to waste the DA’s resources.”
“Well, hells bells. There must be something—”
Carl didn’t get to finish his sentence. Bennie lost traction in a particularly tight turn and slid under one of the parked cars. One of the nicer ones.
Carl looked like he had just popped a gasket. “Oh my God! Vandalism! Property damage! Vehicular assault!”
Patti glared at Carl. This guy’s a real dumb-ass. “No, Carl, vehicular assault isn’t assaulting a vehicle, it’s using a vehicle to assault a person. But yeah, we might be able to get him on vandalism. Looks like he’s not getting up. He might be hurt, let’s check it out.”
Carl was whooping and laughing and cursing all at once as Patti drove the squad car over to where Bennie had slid under the parked car. He became ecstatic when Bennie came within range of the squad car’s sub-q ID chip scanner and he saw Bennie already had two strikes. Double bonus!
Bennie saw them coming and tried to get up to run, but his left leg wouldn’t support his weight. He looked down at the source of the sharp pain and could see blood and his foot was turned at an unnatural angle. Oh crap! His mind raced as he attempted to crawl away. No-no-no-no! Not a third strike! Do you know what they do to third strikes? It’s gonna be terrible!
Carl jumped out of the squad car and, before Patti could protest, drew his taser-dart, giving Bennie a double shot just in case he was on drugs. Bennie collapsed from the combined pain of the fracture and the double tasering, pissing and shitting himself as he passed out.
Carl was overjoyed. My first collar and a third-strike bonus! He rushed over to the now motionless Bennie and started kicking and beating him with his baton, thinking, Some real action at last, my first chance to punish a true spit-wad criminal! Patti was yelling at Carl to disengage and was about to taser-dart him to get him to stop when they both heard a siren.
Carl froze in mid-kick. They looked up and saw a Real Police drone, blue and red lights flashing, hovering barely twenty feet above them. Patti wondered how long it had been there, knowing drones usually took much longer to respond once they received a signal from a PSO’s taser discharge. Carl didn’t even have time to utter “Aw-w hell” before the drone taser-darted both of them, pissing their pants as they fell unconscious to the ground.
* * *
Bennie woke with a jolt, agitated. His last memory was one of pain from the combination of the broken ankle and the double tasering. Looking around, he saw he was in a bed with clean sheets in a large room with a faint antiseptic smell. There were curtained partitions on either side of him, someone sleeping in a bed across from his.
When he shifted to turn around, he saw a small window. So, he thought, I’m in some sort of hospital ward. He looked at his broken leg; the skin was cut up pretty badly, and the break was stabilized with an external metal frame and pins. Wow, this must be bad. His other leg was restrained to the bed frame. Bennie remained quiet, worried that he was back in Detention.
A uniformed Ward Trustee carrying a clipboard approached Bennie’s bed. “Mr. Taylor, glad to see you’re finally awake. You’ve been out for a while.”
Yup, this is Detention. The only place in the world where they call me Mr. Taylor.
The Ward Trustee referred to her notes while speaking to Bennie. “You probably realize you are in Detention. You’ve been convicted of two counts of vandalism and one of resisting arrest. As this is your third strike, and one with serious multiple charges, you are to be detained for an indefinite period, the length to be determined by how you progress in Guidance and Training.
“The break was really bad, so your leg will remain in external fixation for several more weeks. You also sustained two cracked ribs and several bruised ones. And, they also removed your spleen, but you can live without that. Must have been quite a fall.”
Bennie could tell from the look on the Ward Trustee’s face that she realized most of his injuries were the result of a beat-down, not a fall. As there was nothing either of them could do about it, he figured it was best just to go along with pretending it was an accident.
Bennie spent the next several weeks restricted to his bed while his reconstructed lower leg mended. Guidance sessions followed the same pattern he had experienced in his two previous Detentions: a pill followed by video goggles to instill a behavior modification plan ordered by the Detention Authority.
After Bennie’s leg was good enough to allow him to walk with a boot, he was given more freedom to wander about the Detention Center’s hospital ward, working to regain some of his strength. He was happy to move around again, absentmindedly noting that his earlier Guidance training seemed to be abating.
One day, the Ward Trustee appeared with a new set of clothes. “Here, these are for you. Put them on.” She handed him a collared shirt, slacks and casual shoes, all in a tan color matching the Trustee’s but without any insignia, and a new ID badge granting a wider range of access within the Detention Center. Bennie was confused. This was not the Detention procedure he was accustomed to.
He dressed while the Ward Trustee waited, and then she accompanied him to a lower level. When they exited the elevator, he saw a long, harshly-lit hallway interrupted by numbered doors every fifteen or twenty feet. She indicated that Bennie should go through door 26 and told him to return to the medical ward once he was finished with his Training Class.
Training Class? That’s a new one.
Bennie entered Room 26. It was arranged with a table, lectern, and a person who appeared to be in charge to his immediate right, and about twenty desks and chairs to his left, half-occupied by men and women wearing the same unadorned tan shirts and slacks. “Welcome to the class, Mr. Taylor. Find yourself a seat. We’re just about to begin.”
Bennie found a seat and, well, he sat, confused about this new environment. It reminded him of his community college classes, except everything was cleaner, smelled better, and the students were well-behaved and neatly dressed.
The Instructor spoke to the class: “I want to welcome all of you to the first day of the new semester. You are here because our testing has indicated that you are ideal training candidates for our program. Not all of you will successfully complete the twelve-week course of study but, for those of you who do, you can look forward to a rewarding career as a Private Security Officer.” And, after a short pause, she said: “With full authority to arrest and detain.”
And the class, including Bennie, responded in unison: “Full authority to arrest and detain. Full authority to arrest and detain. Full authority to arrest and detain.”
The Instructor paused again, smiling gently at her students, and then asked: “Do you have any questions before we begin?”
Bennie had questions. Tons of questions. Like:
What testing?
Why did we all just chant like that?
What am I doing here, an unemployed three-striker who just spent the last two months in the hospital ward upstairs?
But no one was asking any questions, and Bennie’s intuition was that it was best not to stand out as some sort of self-centered talkative wise-ass, so he sat there in silence.
Me? I’m gonna be The Man? Really? Bennie felt a sudden unfamiliar urge to beat some worthless spit-wad into a pulp. Well, hot damn, maybe that would be OK.
Copyright © 2025 by Mark Ifanson
