While snow was coating the streets of Charleston Feb. 12, freshman John Bradford Cooper was getting ready to make an impulsive decision that he would be paying for long after the snow melted.
While intoxicated, Cooper pulled a fire alarm in College Lodge, his residence hall.
“I don’t even know why I did it. I was running around my dorm in an intoxicated state. I had this American flag tied around my back. I was completely out of it, and I pulled the fire alarm for no reason,” Cooper said. “It was not malicious. It was a spontaneous decision.”
Seeing all of his friends outside in the cold made Cooper realize that he had made a mistake and motivated him to take responsibility. He wrote a confession letter that night apologizing to the residents of College Lodge, the fire department that had to come out for a false alarm and everyone the alarm inconvenienced.
Cooper gave the letter to his Residence Hall Director the next day. He identified himself in the security video for Public Safety Feb. 15 and was glad he did not try to deny it.
“You see me on this camera running down the hall, looking right into the camera, wearing the flag on my back. I was glad I turned myself in because they would have identified me. I feel like that helped my case,” Cooper said. “I learned that it’s good to be honest and do the right thing.”
The next day, two Public Safety officers were waiting for Cooper at a meeting with his RHD. They told him they were charging him with misrepresenting a fire alarm and tampering with fire equipment. They read him a warrant and had him sign it. The officers handcuffed Cooper and took him to Public Safety headquarters, where he filled out paperwork. Then the officers took Cooper to Leeds County Jail in North Charleston.
Cooper says he was afraid of going to jail but accepted that he had no control over the situation when he was arrested.
“Once you get handcuffed you are completely in the control of someone else. You have no way to get out of that situation,” Cooper said. “I was scared, but at the same time I was kind of just interested in what was going to happen to me. Once you have no control, there’s really no point in worrying about it too much.”
At Leeds County Jail, Cooper spent 26 hours in temporary incarceration: a large old gymnasium with small, plastic, dirty, smelly cots with one blanket.  
“I was lucky that I didn’t get put into a cell. I was just in this temporary place where everybody’s getting filed through. But if they put you into a cell it takes much longer to process you. That’s when you can have a book and get all the clothes,” Cooper said. “So I didn’t get the full experience, but I got a good taste of jail for sure. Not somewhere I’m going to go back.”
Cooper said he had an interesting night with a diverse group of 40 men waiting to be booked: some just like him and some hardened criminals.
“They all know each other in there. People go to jail, and they keep going back. One guy didn’t even remember the first time he went to jail,” Cooper said.
Cooper says he slept next to a man named J-Rock with two teardrop tattoos and experience in jail.
“He seemed like a really hardcore guy, not like somebody I would associate with in normal life,” Cooper said. “But J-Rock and I talked into the night because neither of us could go to sleep. We talked about soul food and our families back home and his little daughter. I realized that even though this criminal is a real person and a cool guy. But he’s going away for a while for guns.”
Then Cooper met a recent college graduate with a heroin problem.
“He looked like an older version of me, kind of innocent looking,” Cooper said. “He had robbed his neighbor’s house to support his heroin habit.”
Cooper also said the men segregated themselves along racial lines.
Cooper says he spent the whole time waiting for his bond hearing, and no one could tell him when it would be.
“I had never felt so much claustrophobia and despair,” Cooper said. “A bunch of time went by where I had no idea what was going on. And they give you nothing to read at all. You can’t bring anything in there. So I was really bored, and in tears at one point.”
Eventually, Cooper went to a back room for a video bond hearing with a judge. The judge gave Cooper a PR bond, which meant he was free to go as long as he appeared in court at 8:30 the next morning.
Cooper said he was in jail for another three or four hours waiting for everything to be processed. When he was released, he was not sure where he would go.
“They just let you go into North Charleston in the middle of the night. You don’t have a ride set up and you can’t call cell phones. Luckily when I got out, five of my friends had looked me up and were waiting for me,” Cooper said.
The next morning, Cooper missed his court date, the one condition of his release, when the car he had borrowed broke down.
“I was freaking out and thought there was a warrant out for my arrest,” Cooper said. “I actually left the dorm and started driving around with my girlfriend. We went to Folly Beach to hide out.”
When Cooper got in touch with the judge, however, he learned that he would not be arrested as long as his application for retrial went through within seven days.
At Cooper’s March 18 retrial Judge Coker gave him pre-trial intervention, according to Public Safety Sergeant Larry Walton. The charges will be dropped as long as Cooper completes his PTI with an appropriate community agency within a year.
Cooper says he learned that little actions can have huge consequences.
“I think people just don’t realize that pulling a fire alarm is such a serious thing. There are so many fire alarms all the time. So you think if you pull it it’s just another fire alarm, no one’s going to find out. It’s just a funny prank, or, like in my case, just a stupid impulsive decision,” Cooper said. “I think if people realized that you can go to jail for pulling a fire alarm, even sitting there intoxicated, waiting to pull it, they’d probably think twice about it.”
The legal consequences of pulling the fire alarm introduced Cooper to the harshness of reality.  
“This is the real world. Once you’re 18 you can’t mess around. It made me realize that society has control over you and will use that control,” Cooper said.
Now that Cooper is out of jail, he says he no longer takes for granted the liberty and control Americans enjoy over their own lives.
“Jail made me appreciate freedom so much more. Not just the freedom to do whatever you want, but to be where you want. Any situation you can always walk away, but there you’re stuck,” Cooper said. “Freedom is a great thing, and when it gets taken away, it’s something you have to appreciate more in your daily life.”