Snooki is taking it back to when the Polizzi met the police.
15 years ago, Jersey Shore star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi was arrested for public drunkenness while strolling the titular strand of commercialized New Jersey coastline. Now taking fans back to one of the most sensational moments in reality TV history by reuniting with the cop who arrested her.
“Alright TikTok, it’s happening – my anniversary of getting arrested on the beach is coming up this week!” the 37-year-old TV personality proclaimed in a video shared on Monday. In order to drum up buzz for a new line of arrest-themed apparel dropping at her Seaside Heights, N.J. merch store, Polizzi then announced, “I’m also seeing again the cop that arrested me. I haven’t seen him since that fateful day where he did arrest me. I haven’t seen him since, so it’s going to be a little reunion today at the Snooki shop.”
On the 2010 episode of the reality series’ 3rd season, the motley cast of beach rats descended on the shore, with Polizzi characteristically outdrinking the group, and expectedly, not handling it very well. Polizzi is seen falling over, yelling expletives, and crying out, “Where is beach!” despite walking directly toward it. Before she knew it, she was being arrested by a police officer who’d been contracted by Jersey Shore network MTV to help keep the peace.
She was eventually charged with disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and criminal annoyance.
“It was just like, ‘Alright, she’s getting out of hand. If this was anybody else, we would arrest them.’ So they had to arrest me. I was nuts,'” she admitted to PEOPLE in a Wednesday interview.
In her first of two TikTok videos chronicling the reunion with Officer Joe Fastige, Polizzi asked her former arresting officer, “That day, what was going through your mind? What did you think when you saw me being disgusting on the beach?”
For the first time, Fastige was able to provide his side of events, which ended up being touchingly sympathetic toward Polizzi. “Not disgusting,” he reassured her, “just having a little bit of fun. Too much fun, but that’s okay. Honestly, I don’t know. I was 21 years old at the time… a baby cop, a year out of the academy, and I was getting paid a little bit of overtime to kind of watch you guys.”
Fastige corroborated Polizzi’s memory that “a bystander was like, ‘We wouldn’t allow anyone else to do this right now’… and then I did what I had to do. But it’s okay, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone gets a little bit too drink and [forgets] where the beach is, even if the beach is right under your feet,” he joked.
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“He was very nice. We did funny little TikToks of reminiscing and reenacting him arresting me. But he’s a nice guy,” Polizzi told PEOPLE. She also explained that even then, she wouldn’t let all the backlash from viewers critical of her behavior on the show get to her: “I never took myself seriously, thank God, so when people talked about me bad or made fun of me, I’m just like, ‘Whatever, let me live.'”
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