My friend's encounter with law enforcement

January 12, 2026

I posted on Facebook that I was trying to find out about a friend R who was, as far as I knew, was being detained. This is the full story as I understand it after talking to him for an hour this evening.

I have had a kind of dysfunctional relationship with my voicemail. I will sometimes go weeks or months between actually checking it, unless I am actively trying to find a job. I have generally been someone who has kept the phone on the bedside table, and many nights I have lain down but ended up scrolling for another hour until it was truly late, like have to be at work in just a few hours late.

In the last week, I decided to try not to do that so much, so Wednesday night, my phone was downstairs. My smart watch was on the charger. My phone has “do not disturb” enabled between about 2300 and about 0630s. I thought I had a few close friends on the “bother anyway even if do not disturb” is enabled, but not only was R not on the list, nobody else was either, so realistically I wasn’t going to hear an incoming call. This is all backdrop for what happened next…

On Thursday morning I waited a while before looking at it. When I did, I saw that I had received about 5 calls from R at about 0500, and a text at about 0830 saying sorry for the trouble. I sent him a couple texts like no biggie, we haven’t met up in a while, we should do that. No response that day, or Friday, or Saturday. On Sunday, while talking to my housemate, he mentioned having transcriptions of his voicemails. I used to have that, and decided maybe it would be good to have that again, so I installed the Visual Voicemail app. The first thing it does is take the messages currently in my mailbox to something I could read. This is what was there from my friend R:

Hey Bob, this is R. Um, I know this is such a random time for me to be calling, but, um, I had a situation, I mean, There’s no way you can describe this on the phone that makes this sound like normal or good. Pretty much I went downstairs to go get mail. While I was in my house drinking and the protection of my own home. And um some cops tried to enter my building. And then I said, hell no. And then somebody came down who let them in, and they were pissed. They were super pissed. And pretty much detained me for that, for that singular reason. They were not there for me. I was just in my house, chilling with my puppy. So I’m calling because I have work in the end, like they’re expecting me soon. And they’re not letting me out of this building that I’ve been detained in until 11:30. My hope is that you’ll contact me within the next 5 minutes even though I know that’s uh, pretty much Not gonna happen. And uh Seeing if you would just do like the ultimate removing, uh, come here and pick me up. That’ll be so freaking awesome. So, uh, that is, uh, what I’m requesting of you. If you see this message, uh, I’m probably will not be able to get back to you, but, uh, in the case that like you see this message like. Pretty much immediately I would love to hear from you and I would love to see if you could pick me up and, you know, save my ass, um. Yeah, so, uh I hope you’ve been well. Thank you. Take care. This is R. Bye.

At this point I’m freaking out. He’s been detained, for all I know, a few days, the 0830 text notwithstanding. I first try to call him. No answer. Not that unusual, but given the voice message, not reasuring. I texted him. Then I went online to find out how do you find out if a person has been detained by law enforcement. There’s a website and a phone number. I look him up on the website because I actually know his real name. Not everyone I consider a friend goes by their actual name, so this is a little exceptional. Nothing there.

I called the phone number.. rang and rang and then disconnected. So nobody is manning that desk. It’s Sunday evening and lots of things aren’t funded as much as they used to be, so that’s not exceptional. Next I posted on Facebook asking if anyone knew how to find someone who has been arrested. I got one response that basically reiterated what I had already done. That friend asked “Is he white?” unfortunately that is a somewhat relevant question in 2026. As it happens R is not white, he’s black, and it had never really been a topic of conversation up til that point, but in my mind he might be a first generation immigrant.

This morning I tried calling his number again, preparing to go down the rabbit hole of calling the dept of corrections in Denver. He answered, but he couldn’t talk right then, so we agreed to catch up later. What follows is my summation of that conversation:

So as the voicemail said, he was chilling in his apartment, having some drinks as one does in their home, and decided to go downstairs to check his mail. He lives in a highrise apartment building in downtown Denver that looks a bit like a nice hotel. He’s in the lobby, and there are some cops outside asking to be let in. He says no, and got a little attitude about it. While this is happening, another resident comes down and lets them in. They start interrogating him: do you live here, bla bla and they decide that he’s drunk and they need to take him into custody. I am aware that has some distinctive legal baggage, but they brought him to what seemed to be something like a drunk tank. He isn’t read his rights, and nobody wants to hear that he doesn’t belong there. Probably everyone who gets taken to this place says things like this. The people running the place treat him like he’s not a human. R said that some of the people there seemed to be unhoused folks for whom this might have been an upgrade. Remember, it’s January in Denver, Colorado. It gets cold outside. R doesn’t lay down, he sits there, watching the time go by.

He pleads with anyone who will listen. He’s not homeless, he has a home, and a job and all that. They told him that if someone wanted to come and get him, they’d release him. Eventually, someone decides to give him a break. First he tries his mom because he knows her number by heart. She able to help. Then this person lets him have his phone, and he calls a few people. That’s when he called me.

He’s freaking out because he’s supposed to be at work in the morning, and they’re telling him that they’re going to hold him until 1130 based on the breathalyzer test they gave him.

Long story shorter, they finally let him go at about 0830. His phone is now nearly dead. Good thing he had it on him when he went to check the mail. That’s when he texted me. When they returned his belongings back, he found a ticket amongst them for … I forget, harassing the police? Some bullshit charge. He ends up taking an Uber home and was only an hour or so late for work. He works from home. The dog was freaking out.

So now he has a court date for this ticket, and he intends to fight it, but is considering doing it without a lawyer. I don’t think that’s a good idea but this has already cost him a bit for basically not letting the cops into his building and giving them some attitude. I get it: black people don’t have a lot of reason to be cooperative with cops.

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