Thanks, everyone, for the support.
Ponygirl, Trinity,
et al, re:
...And my experience with court sounds very much like PonyGirl's. It was like an assembly line or even a deli counter, except that people's lives and futures are at stake.
I have a "hunch" about this one. When I went in to pay McW's remaining diversion fee earlier this week, I spoke with one of the prosecutors (they run the program). I inquired about not paying the second half of the fee if McW gets his diversion revoked and heads back to court. "Nope. The fee is due in full upon acceptance to the program. It's the price someone pays for a second chance at a record-free life via diversion. If you fail to complete the program one day or 11 months into it, the fee is still due - and forfeit".
He then made the not-so-cryptic remark "I've seen his file - he had his chance"....
Fair enough. I pay the other half, put it on McWeedy's tab, and then waited outside to finish the remaining paperwork. While there, I hear the diversion officer chewing out another "diversionee" about three failed UA's for booze. Most of the talk was quiet (as it should be), but it was hard not to hear the diversion officer's angry voice saying "you agreed not to drink or do drugs, yet you showed dirty three times in a month. What to you
think we're going to do?". He then says "Well, you're going to jail. No, not house arrest, jail. Diversion revoked, wait here while I get an officer to arrest you...."
Sheesh. Sounds like this "poor soul"
came in for a normal meeting with his DO, who was waiting for him to show up and confront him with the failed UA's. I know they expect to see folks on drug/booze diversion to show dirty, but McW was specifically told that they expect to see the numbers go
down. And in the case of booze, they better
never see it because it's out of the system in 12-24 hours, and doesn't take months to metabolize out of your fat cells. This poor fellow dropped dirty for booze at least twice, sounds like the third bad test was the bad-luck charm.
Which got me to thinking, I wonder how many UA's McW's failed from booze that he doesn't know about yet.....
Anyway, after waiting (and unobtrusively listening) for about 20 minutes, I see McW's prosecutor walk over to his diversion officer and
quietly ask about his UA's. I know he failed the one on Tuesday, since he was out all night and came home stinkin' drunk at 1am, was still puking up vodka (or whatever) at 2:30am. No way he passes a UA less than 12 hours later. He's already in court on theft charges today. All I heard was "I need one more UA, when will that be?" (it was that day, by coincidence). Then I heard the word "arrest".
My guess is that McW's going to show up for the theft charges, have to face them, and will then be revoked by the prosecutor and arrested. Why send a patrolman over when McW's going to come to them, in
their house?
That
will be a shock for him if it happens, since wife won't be there (she won't go), and I'm not sure I can get away from work to go (or would go, even if I could get away). Then again, maybe he expects to get arrested tomorrow. He might be expecting it because he tried to schmooze 20 bucks of "his" money from us last night (at 8:30pm) to "go play lazer tag" for three hours. On a school night, when he has a college class the next day at 8am.
I told him no. When he asked why, I replied that the last few times he's asked for money to take his girlfriend to dinner, go get gas because he's out, whatever, he always ends up disappearing for the night and comes back drunk (or smelling like he'd been drinking). "But I don't have school tomorrow - it's spring break!". "Sorry, you owe us over 700 dollars, you haven't been to work for a week, your Mother spent her whole weekend doing most of
your work on your artwork for the Starbucks display while you slobbed on the couch, and yet you want twenty bucks. Even if I
did trust you, it's abominable that you ask us for money after all that. So no, you can't have any".
So, he skulks up to his room, but something's up. At 10pm, he's still fully dressed (including shoes and a hoody), reading. Not 10 minutes after wife gets in the shower, he bolts for the front door yelling "Exxxxx is taking me out to dinner, back in an hour". And he's gone.
And, is it a shock he never came home? I'd guess he's expecting bad things to happen at court, and decided to go for one last hurrah before trading his thug duds for an orange jumpsuit.
Maybe his suspicions (and mine) are right, and he'll be sleeping at the county concrete hotel tonight. Or, maybe the McWeedy lucky charm spell is still in full force and he'll walk away with another court date, but otherwise unscathed. But I doubt it. And I hope not. We'll see.
wife has already stated (and I quickly agreed) that if McW gets arrested, he can make his own bail/bond, and find his own attorney (i.e. a public defender). He's a big boy now...
I'll let everyone know later how it goes.
Mikey