Epic cop chase: Story time with Uncle Jon

Photo: Weston Colton

Due to a special request made by Jesse Anthony, I am going to tell a cop chase story. The picture seen here, which is Garrett Taylor obviously bummed out, probably at the fact that he drove for 45 minutes each way during a visit in Salt Lake to film me slam super hard trying to grind that power box. Yes, that picture you love of my crotch sweat all up in your face, that's the one I'm talking about. This picture is completely unrelated to the story that I'm going to tell except for the fact that the story took place in St. George, and I met Garrett in St. George. That's it. Ok, now the story... I'd say I was 14, Matt, my brother, was 16, and Nick Graff, our best friend and pretty much the only kid that skated in St. George with us (a side note on Nick- he's a rad kid. Now that I look back, he was only 11 when I first met him and he had a bicked  head and was wearing a shirt that he made with a skull wearing a helmet with a spike on it and with long hair, baggy camouflage cargo pants, and a toy machine skateboard. How can you not appreciate a kid like that?... He got me and Matt into skating, and we skated with him several times a week for years. Almost every cop chasing incident we ever had, Nick was present. In fact, he had probably instigated it. But he taught me and Matt the fine art of hiding and running from cops, which has served me well in my life up until now. We had a lot of fun as kids...), Nick was 13 I think. Around there. Anyway, so Nick had discovered this roof at Dixie High School that you could ollie off of onto foam football practice pads. It was like having a tumbling gym with an 8 foot drop you could jump off of into a foam pad. Nick went crazy on that thing, we sent the pad up probably 15 feet away from the roof and he'd ollie it. I almost impaled myself on my skateboard on it a couple times and was quite suspicious of the whole set up, but Nick was made for this kind of stuff. So one night as we were making our rounds through St. George to Burger King, the designated rendez-vous point with Nick's mom, we stopped at Dixie High to skate off the roof, a mandatory. So me and Nick climb up on the roof, and Nick starts jumping off it in the dark, almost pitch black. It was nuts. I was standing up there threatening to do it, and Nick had just climbed back up the roof, and Matt was standing at the bottom. Then all of a sudden, blue and red lights start flashing behind us in the parking lot, and this voice on a loud speaker yells something incoherent like "St Geor..... olice depar..... ..... ..... surrounded, don't run!" Matt either didn't hear the message, didn't process the message, or didn't care because he took off running SO fast. Like a startled cat that darts of out the bushes or something, he was GONE! He ran the opposite way of the cop, fortunately (I've seen kids trying to run from the cops that run towards the cops. I think that they think that if they run at the cop, it's like a game of chicken, and the cop will quite naturally back down because cops are afraid of 15 year old kids with skateboards. Don't do it, it won't work. Just run the other way). So the cop had snuck up behind me and Nick on the roof in stealth mode and sneak attacked us. Having been taken by surprise, we surrendered ourselves to the custody of the police. We felt we stood better chances at reasoning with the man than jumping off the roof and running. So we got off the roof, and the cop sat us down. He asked us who that other guy was that ran off, and we both said we didn't know. We had just met him a couple minutes earlier, and he decided to follow us. That was the rehearsed story in case one of us ever ran and the others got caught. Like on Goodfellas when the kid gets pinched at the beginning. Robert De Niro tells him that he learned 2 great lessons: don't ever rat on your friends and keep your mouth shut. We took that to heart, and we had planned stories that coincided so that the cops would believe us, and whoever ran would be off home free. I'm telling you, to be able to pull this off as a 14 year old, you have to have a strong stomach for this kind of thing. Cops will detect any variance in story or fear in your eyes. But I was well practiced at deceiving higher authorities. I started when I was 8 years old and I told the principal that Matt didn't write swear words on the bus seat with a paperclip even though they had several eye witnesses that were testifying against me and Matt. My friend David cried in the principle's office and said that Matt did it. He sold us out. Some friend... No, it actually started earlier than that when I denied writing "MATT" on our white couch with a pen when I was 7. I kept a straight face for 2 weeks every time my Dad interrogated me, and I finally confided in my brothers that it was me, and they turned me into my parents who cut off my mullet as punishment. True story, you can't make this stuff up... Suffice it to say, I was well trained in the art of lying to higher authority (a practice that I don't encourage. My lawyer told me to add that so this story won't come back to haunt me...). And Nick, he was even more experienced than me, so we were good. The cop didn't want to believe us at all that we didn't know the guy that ran off, but we both had the same story, and we told it without having to think about it. Lesson learned: prepare yourselves... So the cop was going to take our info down, but then we saw two people walking towards us in the direction that Matt had run. They caught him!!! Turns out that the campus security cop dude was the one that called on us, and he was hiding at the top of these stairs where Matt ran. When Matt got to the top of the stairs, he got Matt, and maybe said, "Where do you think you're going?" You'll have to verify that with Matt, but I like to think the cop had a cliche one liner that he had modified from an Arnold Shwartzininigger quote from "Predator"... or "Junior". (This is Matt. Jon wanted me to verify this.  I ran and this cop popped out of these bushes on the top of this hill to the right of me and he took off running after me and was like "Where do you think you're going!" I kept running, but he was way faster and caught up to me, so I had to give up.  He asked me the same thing, and all I could say was "I don't know, I'm just running."Real smart stuff.)  So he brought Matt back, and he even commented on how fast Matt had taken off. That's a compliment in our book... Then I was ready for it, the wrath of the cops that skaters receive in St George. Nothing short of capital punishment for this one... I tried reaching for the cyanide capsules in my pocket that I carried in case the enemy had ever caught me, but then the cops didn't seem to be all that upset. They started laughing and joking with each other, and even us. They asked us for ID, I said I didn't have any, gave them a fake name, and hoped they wouldn't check it. I even had my wallet in my back pocket, but they didn't even care. They got Matt and Nick's names as well, then the cop casually said, "alright guys, we can't have you on the roof like that cause you can fall off and get hurt. So don't go up there, ok?".... alright... serious? all those lights, loudspeakers, and chasing just to tell us we shouldn't be on the roof? We already knew that, you didn't have to waste your time telling us. And we went back up there after that. Several times.... I thought for sure we were getting into serious trouble, especially because Matt ran.. But nothing. what a relief... Ok, after proof reading this story, I just realized that I look like a compulsive lier, and you'll never trust me again. For the record, I'm a changed man. I even said it after I threw up at the end of my part in Bolts of Thunder. And another thing, why are you judging me? Anyone who frowns upon these stories, you are the kid that would have started crying when the cops got you, you would have told your parents who would have grounded you, taken your skateboard, made you sing in a boys choir as a hobby, and now you're questioning your sexuality. All that because you didn't know what business you were in when you picked up that skateboard! But when the cops asked me those questions, I wasn't upset. I didn't ask any questions, and I didn't seek revenge. Because THIS IS THE BUSINESS WE ARE IN! THIS IS THE BUSINESS WE HAVE CHOSEN! Mo Green was a friend of mine too... But for reals this time, as long as you're not trying to put me in handcuffs, put my brothers in handcuffs, or wanting to cut off my mullet, I will tell you the truth.