Drunk teenager stumbles into an Airbnb rented by police
Teenager did not face criminal charges after he was discovered to be inside the police officer’s temporary home
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A teen woke in handcuffs following a night of partying in Milwaukee after he accidentally stumbled into an Airbnb rented by police officers, according to video posted on TikTok.
The law enforcement officers awoke that morning and discovered the 19-year-old man sleeping in their accommodations. The officers were visiting from Montana to take part in emergency vehicle training.
The video was shared on the Flathead County Sheriff's Office Facebook page but was originally posted on the TikTok page @sherrifk9misty, an account where Charles Pesola posts about life as a police officer alongside his dog Misty to his over 200,000 followers. He also posts tips about how to make it as a deputy sheriff, such as wearing a suit to your interview.
It was also shared on the Instagram page of the same name.
Mr Pesola announced at the beginning of the video while accompanied by two other police officers: “Story time!”
“Well, apparently we crashed with a drunk dude last night”, he said, explaining that he believed the loud noise he heard was one of the two other officers, deputy Matt Van Der Ark and deputy Nelson Grant. Both deny being the source of the noise in the TikTok.
“We then realised that one of the doors was open,” Mr Pesola said to the camera, which implied signs of an intruder.
Following this discovery, they went searching around the temporarily rented house, until the three visitors to the city found the sleeping teenage boy in one of the beds in the house.
“This silly guy found the one Airbnb in all of downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin loaded with cops,” Mr Pesola said.
In the video, they edited together a montage of them alerting the local Milwaukee authorities. According to local news outlet WKYT, they did not arrest the man.
“He made a mistake. It’s OK. We’re gonna get over it, and at the end of the day, we can smile about it,” said deputy Vander Ark.
Mr Pesola said things could have gone differently if the teenager had been in a different house.
“What if that dude stumbled into a bed with a kid or my wife? I mean, it could have been a different morning, right? So, wrong place, wrong time [but] lucky place, lucky time, that there’s dudes that actually know how to handle that.”
The teenager said it was “the first time he’d woken up in a random place” to the police officers in the video.
When asked why he posted the video, he said in the same interview, “Cops have a hard time right now, and when they can see we’re still having fun and still real people and we’re good, it’s a good thing.”
Last year, America began a national reckoning over the role and responsibilities of police officers, questioning whether they had too much power and resources, asking if they were institutionally racist or acted too much like a military.
This conversation was reignited after the release of footage of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for nine-and-a-half minutes, leading to Mr Floyd’s death. Chauvin was found guilty of three charges over the killing on 20 April.
The Independent reached out to Flathead County Sheriff’s Office for comment.