Snooki Reunites with Cop Who Arrested Her on 15th Anniversary of Infamous Jersey Shore Moment

Snooki took to social media to mark the 15th anniversary of one of the most iconic and chaotic moments in Jersey Shore history: her beachside arrest in Seaside Heights.

On July 30, 2010, Snooki was arrested for disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and criminal annoyance after a wild night out that led to her viral “Where’s the beach?” moment. Now, she’s opening up to PEOPLE about the drunken day that landed her behind bars.

“I literally hardly got any sleep, and obviously, we were drinking a lot,” she recalled of that fateful morning after a night out at Karma. “So when I woke up, I was dead, like dying. I walked in with my club dress still on and a blanket. I was dying. I needed sleep.”

But rather than ride it out at work during her t-shirt shop shift, Polizzi decided to bail.

“I was like, ‘Okay, if I need to finish this shift and do this, I’m just going to run away and keep the party going. I’m going to go get a mimosa, I’m going to go enjoy myself, and then I’ll go back to work.’ But then obviously I got arrested.”

Before she got cuffed, Snooki gave the world one of her most meme-worthy quotes: screaming “Where is the beach?” while clearly standing beside it.

“I meant, ‘How do you get on the beach?'” she clarified. “There’s only so many ramps on the boardwalk to get on the beach. So I was so drunk that I wasn’t asking the right question. That’s why I kept running, because I couldn’t find a ramp. And then when I finally got onto the beach, that’s when the girls came and they were like, ‘You cannot swim. You need to go home.'”

Eventually, production security stepped in.

“They were actually with us. They weren’t working for the town at the time,” she explained. “But then 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.”

Despite the chaos, Snooki said the cops were “really super nice, because they knew I was scared.”

“I never got arrested before or got in trouble like that, so I was nervous. I was asking to call my dad. I was like, ‘What’s going to happen?’ So they didn’t put me in a cell right away. They actually let me sit down and they offered me a doughnut. They were like, ‘Everything’s going to be fine. You just have to stay here for a little bit. It’s protocol.'”

Once she realized she wasn’t “going to jail for the rest of life,” she calmed down — and even took a quick nap in the cell.

“I thought I was in jail overnight, but I was only there for a couple of hours,” Snooki quipped. “And then they were like, ‘All right, your friends are here. You can leave.'”

To celebrate the moment that launched a thousand GIFs, Polizzi reunited with Officer Joe Fastige — the man who arrested her — and invited him to The Snooki Shop in Seaside Heights.

“It was very funny to see him, and it was just laughs,” Snooki shared. “He was very nice. We did funny little TikToks of reminiscing and reenacting him arresting me. But he’s a nice guy.”

In the TikTok in question, Snooki is back on the boardwalk with Officer Fastige holding the mother of three’s hands behind her back as she tries to fight him off, complete with her signature black sunglasses and a trucker hat.

Jersey Shore‘s official Instagram account even got in on the fun, sharing production stills from that fateful day.

“an iconic day all should celebrate…WHERE’S THE BEACH? 🤣 #jerseyshore #imagoodperson,” the show captioned the laugh-out-loud post.

Now 36, Snooki says she’s able to look back and laugh at her wild, younger days.

“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,'” she said. “I feel like, especially back then, everyone had something to say about us. They were judging whatever. It’s not like we were killing people. We were just enjoying ourselves, being young and single at the boardwalk and down the shore.”

And while there was a moment Snooki though her “life was over” after the arrest, she now calls it “just a silly little mistake.”

These days, Snooki, who shares Lorenzo, 12, Giovanna, 10, and Angelo, 6, with husband Jionni LaValle, has shifted her priorities a bit. She still makes time for trips down to the shore, both with her Jersey Shore castmates and her family, but it’s definitely a different experience.

“We still can have a good time,” she added of the Jersey Shore crew, most of whom are parents now. “But then we’re dead for a week.”

As for her kids, she has same sage advice for them in case they ever find themselves in a similar situation: “I always tell my kids, ‘If anything happens, you’re uncomfortable, or something goes wrong, please call me. I will come get you. I’m not going to be mad at you. I want you to tell me everything.'”