Busted in O-Hi-O
This is why I don’t donate to the FOP I think to myself, as I’m pulled over by a policeman with too much time on his hands: it seems I donate annually via some sort of ticky-tack foul.
“License and registration,” he says. I ask why he pulled me over and he said, “failure to come to a complete stop at an intersection.”
The “intersection” was a parking lot and a road. There was no stop sign. I was making a right-hand turn and, yes it’s true I didn’t come to a complete stop. It was news to me you had to stop. (Later I would find out that it is actually not a requirement to stop but I’m getting ahead of myself.)
I guess experience is the only way to really identify with someone. I can identify with blacks who are pulled over for “driving while black” because I was pulled over for “driving while an officer was bored”. Power corrupts, and any fiction that the police work for us is just that – fiction. I began to feel vaguely guilty that I’d been supportive of Bush’s anti-civil liberties measures.
The officer I was talking to was annoyed by my honest curiosity as to why I was pulled over. I was very calm, as I usually am after Mass. "You have to stop at every intersection!" He'd raised his voice and had “protesteth too much” and by his attitude I realized immediately he knew it was ticky-tack and that was good enough for me. He had the power and a quota to make and I didn’t. I didn’t argue, knowing that arguing with someone with a badge is even stupider than arguing with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
Then the guy’s partner comes over and begins shining a bright light all over my truck, apparently looking for something to nail me on.
“Man, you’re on me like white on rice,” I say, surprised not only by the other cop’s sudden appearance out of nowhere but also that I would say that.
It felt like a real live episode of Cops, only on that show the perps show more butt-crack and the drama comes after someone has run from them, not after someone made a right turn in front of them. It's Friday night 8pm, I’m thinking the boys must be thirsty for a DUI. But I was just coming from church, and sober as a church mouse.
So they took my license and presumably began writing out my ticket. They were back there for fifteen minutes or so, when three police cars stream down the road adjacent to us. They suddenly put on their lights and took off following them. Cop down?
Now I’m sitting there in this parking lot with no license. Theoretically I can’t drive. Ten minutes go by. I wonder if I can go, or if I’m supposed to wait here. What if the cop forgets he has my license? I call my wife and she looks up the non-emergency police number.
I dial in and get a female officer. Good, I think to myself, I like females. They’re always slightly more sympathetic than hard-ass guys. Women are the more civilized of the species and it’s always been my suspicion that more of them go to Heaven, or at least deserve to. Or maybe it's just that we all get along better with the opposite sex, since we're more indulgent of the other sex. I explain my situation fairly articulately. Her voice, hard at the beginning, softens to the point of being nearly unrecognizable from its initial sound. She puts me on hold while she calls the young officers.
After a couple minutes on hold she comes back and says that the officers had some sort of report of a person with a gun but it turned out to be a false alarm. They’re doing paperwork and will be back. I ask for their badge numbers and she gives me their car number and a number to call in order to get their badge numbers. I call my wife and she searches the Ohio BMV for this rule about having to stop at all intersections. There is no such rule. (I think: "that and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee - unless you're a lawyer of course." Lawyers, powerful also in the sense that they can sue over picayune things, are the great cop equalizers.)
So an hour after I’m pulled over our cops return to the scene of the non-crime. Both come up to the window and, remarkably, change their story. The cop who'd shined his lights in my truck announced that I wasn’t pulled over for failure to stop at an intersection after all but for failure to stop before pulling out from a private drive. (Later my wife looked this up and sure enough there’s a law that it’s at the officer’s discretion but he can pull you over for failure to come to a complete stop before exiting a private drive. News to me. And the officer pointed out that all of these shopping center parking lots were private drives.)
I figured that my having to wait would probably save me from a ticket and I was not disappointed. I was left with a warning. Waiting an hour and saving $100 (or whatever) in ticket costs is far more than I make an hour at work, so in that sense it was an hour well-spent.
It was like having a fresh $100 in my pocket. Maybe I won’t have to donate to the annual fund to support police officers this year after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment