Modern Vespa

I got a high speed flat in the car pool lane this last week and a cop closed down the freeway long enough for me to get to the safe side of the road to get the bike towed. I really want to thank that cop for his assistance. Being stuck in the middle of 7 lanes of traffic in each direction was not fun and neither was trying to control the bike after the flat.

When I was a kid watching 70's cop shows as they were originally aired, I'd occasionally ask my dad "they can't do that, can they?" when something a character did seemed like an abuse or a violation of someone's rights. My dad (who at the time was the chief judge of the USAF 1st circuit court, had been the Chief Appellate Defense Counsel for the USAF, and for most of his career was a prosecutor) would answer "of course they can - they have guns."

The point, really, is that the more authority someone wields, the more important it is that they follow the rules since with a badge and a weapon you can get by with all sorts of things. We hand over considerable authority to certain people in order to do certain things for us. We tend to resent it greatly when they exceed the limits we place on that authority.

I've worked with lots of cops whom I greatly respect. The best constantly guard against losing track of the risks of abusing their authority.

i like the police, but when one gives me a ticket for going a few over the speed limit and people are going much faster than me all the time, what i mean is when i get a ticket for going 5mph over and someone within 30 sec of me will be doing 20mph over, why the hell are you writing me the ticket. if you look for saftey go after the big offenders not the first you see. and i never get a brake becouse i am a young male. they don't give me warnings just tickets. but i have beatin them so far.

I have actually finished a couple....

The woman was brilliant, courageous and prescient.

But dam, she is a tough read......not what I would call 'recreational reading'....

R

8)

"You don't like cops? Then the next time someone robs you, call a hippie!"

--My Grandfather, after hearing me complain about the cop that gave me my first speeding ticket in 1979.

Some people on the forum have suggested this is not a place for this discussion. Why not? Policing has a big effect on how we ride.

I hate being stopped by traffic cops. Hate it hate it hate it and I have been a cop for 22 years so I understand why the rest of you hate it. I just have an insiders knowledge about who and why it happens.

Oh and the idea that police depts get the money for the tickets? Nah. Goes into general revenue. It is collected by the state and goes into the general budget. However there is often pressure on the police chief by the government to get fine money.

This is the reason that governments (not so much the police) love speed and red light cameras. The cameras are way cheaper than a cop and in one month can pay for themselves and then ts all profit after that. They dont need breaks, they can snap a speeder every 3 seconds ( takes about 15 minutes for a cop to run a stop.)

Dura lex, sed lex.


It is a hard law, but it is the law.


It is the law. That is why police enforce it.

people hated our police force (RUC) so much that they had to change the name lol to PSNI lol They even changed the colour of the land rovers too lol

It is highly unlikely that you were cited for 5 mph over the limit. Trying to justify your actions by comparing with the actions of others is indeed the sign of a young person.

Maybe some of those tickets would turn into warnings if you tweaked the attitude a little bit. However, if you are "beatin" them as you say, keep up the good work.

well, i think laws about scooters can be unclear, so maybe people feel like they get stopped just for riding a scooter. i know some cops are nice and honorable, bu the cops in my town are assholes! really stinks, cuz things would be better if the cops were more involved with the kids and did good things like cops are supposed to! and most cops think that becouse they're a cop they dont have to follow the laws (cops without sirens have cut me off quite a few times!). if you are a cop, i beleive that you very well are nice and such, so dont listen to cop haters!

I'm glad we are friends despite our differences.

Viva La Differance'

Quit making such a RUCKUS...

R

8)

Interesting thread.

Jess, mistaken about what? The slamming of cops here on this board for someone's poor driving/riding skills? The fact that some cops make mistakes and are wrong on occasion? Or that someone got a ticket that they deserved because they ride/drive unsafe?

Let me tell you some thing I have been on rallys and seen so much illegal things going on that even a rookie cop could go through a whole ticket book in ten minutes. Illegal tags, blocking intersections, running red lights, you name it, no motorcycle endorsements, and the list goes on.

I am assigned to a motor unit and never heard any one of my squad partners saying, "Hey lets target all those damned scooter riders", it just doesn't happen. It is obvious that you must have had a few negative contacts with the police and it shows in your responses and my now half target rating. I don't have anything against you or this board, it's just I hear this all day, dumb cops this and dumb cops that and am getting sick of whiners (isn't that a new rule, no whiners). You can be sure that the book of citations that I handed out today were all righteous and the warnings given were all deserved, but I am sure that in their minds I was getting cussed out and in one case a guy verbalized his displeasure with lots of F-bombs and the like, (he was talking to a business client on his phone without a hands free device). I can't wait till that one goes to court and the judge asks me how the defendants demeanor was.

If anyone here gets a ticket that they think was wrong, you can always take it to court and fight it same for you Jess.

Well, I actually read all of Atlas Shrugged during my senior year in high school, just for recreational reading I found her writing to be not just dense, but incredibly dull. I've got libertarian leanings, but that woman was off her chain. I also read Les Miserables that year & it spoke to me & my concerns much more than Atlas Shrugged. I still feel the same 20+ years later. To each his own though. We're a diverse group here on MV & I wouldn't have it any other way.

I think you're seeing an anti-cop bias where none exists. You're a cop, you're going to make note of every negative post or comment regarding cops.

Do a search for the term "cager." Now, most of us own and enjoy cars, but you will find many threads and posts complaining about a driver or drivers. It doesn't mean that we hate cars, or people who drive them. It does mean that someone in a car hit a scooter, came close to hitting one, or did something to piss one off. It happens.

Members of forums are much more likely to post negative experiences than positive ones. Sure, there are occasional "love my scooter" posts, but reading through, you'll see a lot more posts about mechanical problems, concerns, something going wrong, and so on.

My point is that it's easy to see a lot of negative biases, and some of that is just the nature of the beast. I doubt anyone here categorically dislikes police or resents law enforcement.

I think you captured the essence of the sentiment here. Thx.
Best
Miguel (Law enforcement supporter)

Good call.

Retired cop here. Well retired from the force and now getting damn near retirement from career two. Anyway, I've been on this forum for over a year and I never really felt like it's a cop hating forum or I would have moved on. Sometimes someone feels rightly or wrongly that they got a bad deal from a cop and they print it here, but so what? It's the same thing if their repair shop didn't do what they thought the shop should have done fixing their scooter. I've worked with, got drunk with, chased women with and been friends or enemies with different cops for over 40 years. Truth is, some cops are dumb or asses and others are great people and frequently heros. Some should never be allowed to pin a badge on and others were born to wear the badge with honor. I annual go visit the Memorial for the fallen officers from my old Department and I know too many of the guys (and now gals) who's names are there. I cry everytime I go and I don't cry easy. So what I'm saying is this, when someone vents about a "bad" cop experience, it doesn't upset me. I don't think he (or she) is talking about the good men and women who serve honorably. They are talking about an experience preceived as bad, rightly or wrongly, as they would any other bad experience. And frequently it's done with a good deal of humor like the DC story yesterday. Don't remember the last time I laughed so hard. Anyway, I never wore the "bad cop" shoe if it doesn't fit the way I did my job. Neither should any other cop who doing the job as it should be done.

What difference does it make? You were breaking the law too. I've never understood that argument.

It makes a world of difference. The difference is that sometimes the law is completely wrong. Laws are supposed to be based on what a community of people agree is legal. Oftentimes, the speed limit in the U.S. is set without most folks' consent and most definitely with no basis in reality in terms of how drivers are utilizing certain roads.

For example, most U.S. agencies use the 85th percentile speed (the speed at which 85% of traffic is traveling) simply as starting point to set a speed limit.

From http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_rpt_504.pdf, page 88: So is that fair? Note the words "almost always" above. It seems to me that the speed limit is routinely set to criminalize the majority of drivers under fuel conservation or safety reasons... the second of which is complete bullshit which I'll cover in a bit. Honestly, can you think of any roads where you regularly travel where the vast majority of drivers are not driving above the posted limit? I can't think of a single on in my daily life unless an LEO is there.

As for safety, a study by a professor at the University of California, Irvine showed that when the national speed limit of 55mph was repealed and states were allowed to set their own speed limits, the states that increased their limits to 65mph saw a reduction in fatality rates of 3.4% over states that kept the old 55mph limit. (Citation: http://ibiblio.org/rdu/65-lives.html)

All this tells me that speed limits are often bogus. And in a case like that, it is the duty of the governed to break that law. Precedent for this is all over the place, especially in war crimes. Simply claiming that you are only following orders from your superiors or the laws of your country will not spare you from being prosecuted for war crimes by the rest of the world.

And that to me is the difference in this debate.

Phouc-

I have had to study the subject of war crimes, no less enforce laws pertaining to it, and I would offer that you are far off the mark in using this analogy.

The "war crimes" illustration you offer pertains to obeying illegal orders, regardless of the rank or office of the person issuing such orders, or the laws under which they are based. Thus, if a country "legalizes" killing prisoners without trial, an act seen as illegal by the bulk of the world (codified in numerous treaties and conventions), any application of that "law" is illegal before a world court.

The speed laws you rail against may be less than wise, in your view, but you would have a very hard time making a case that they are "illegal" in the eyes of any court, statute or jurisdiction. There is a difference between "illegal" and "unpopular". Further, obeying a speed limit does not, in such compliance, result in an illegal act - at least in any civilized jurisdiction.

You seem to be confusing the "Eichmann Defense" with complying with laws that are not held to be illegal anywhere. Eichmann claims he would have been prosecuted for not obeying orders, and therefore should not be prosecuted for "only obeying them". Since the orders themselves were patently illegal (outside of the view of the Nazi state) under established convention, his "defense" was unfounded.

Now, that said, many jurisdictions define precisely how speed limits must be established, marked, etc, and if a given limit is established in variance with the statute or statutory regulation, the courts can and will overturn tickets issued based on such speed limits. But these irregular speed limits tend to be lower than allowed, and it would be difficult to see any harm or inherent offense in obeying them.

I'm not really sure what to say to that, Phuoc. If you feel a particular speed limit is unjust you're free to mount a challenge, or try your necessity defense the next time you get a ticket. I wouldn't recommend it though.

Another thing that comes up is the idea that the cops set the speed limits or make the laws. Nope. The police Commissioners are lucky if they even get notified of a law change that might affect them and are asked by the government to comment. The comment is usually to be restricted to the ability of the police to enforce it or as to what resources may be required to do so.

Our politicians make the laws. In the case of road rules they take advice from road safety committees. I don't what the name is in the UK or US but I know they have them. They are people who have Doctorates in Traffic and road safety related subjects. They work for government research departments who specialise in this stuff. There are no cops on these boards.

Also something I have noticed over the years is how many people tell tall stories or repeat them. When a "friend of a friend" has an amazing story about their run in with the cops where they are this reasonable person coping with all these nazi cops be very careful. IN a number of cases I have been asked by people to look into cases where their sons were treated badly by police. In two of these instances I was the officer involved although they didnt know it. When people have a bad hair day and a few too many pills or drinks or both they sometimes squeeze the truth.

When we put cameras into our stations local lawyers were very eager to get their hands on the tapes when a client reported we had been horrible. When showed the tapes the lawyer would say, "Okay boys thanks for that." and you never heard of it again. There are bad cops and stuff will happen but in professionally run departments our clients are usually the rapists liars thieves and bashers. Not us.

Also good cops hate hate hate corrupt police. We will shop them ourselves. As to why some get away with it for so long I can say that it is hard to convict a dumb ass for a crime. When you are trying to convict a cop it is mega harder. They know how to hide evidence and they know how we operate.

I guess a lot of you only see cops when you get busted for something to do with traffic. Traffic is maybe 10% of work. A lot of us hate it and only do as little as we can get away with. Some like it (cant see why) and do as much as they can. In my department we didnt do much because we were flat out most of the time. We got a bad rep because we had slow response times. Even the victims would be angry about it.

I remember my worst was being in charge of the Sexual Crimes Unit. I was supposed to have 14 Detectives. I had 8 on paper. One was on holiday usually. Another would often be on a course or relieving as a supervisor in another section. One or two would often be in court. When the flu season came around they just came in anyway and I often had to send them home because they were too sick. We were on 24 hour call out and Friday and Saturday night you could bank on call outs. They would either just work all night and then through the next day.

We had a success rate of about 10% in court. (Sex crimes are the hardest to prove) And when you consider that maybe only 10% of reported crimes ended up in court (you only send up the ones you think have a chance) we really had a rate of about 1 in 100 success.

This sounds terrible but this is not unusual in police departments. What often happens is that you either harden up and just do the job and go home and pretend you dont care or you get all emotional and start yelling at people and other cops and end up on pills. I think the divorce rate in our department was about 600000% (Me twice)

However I don't make excuses for bad policing. I bet when you go into emergency departments of hospitals you will find beautiful people who despite working in a madhouse while 30% understaffed and dealing with drunks and dopers all night are still nice at 3 am. But you will also get grumpy rude people who are just overwhelmed and wish they were somewhere else.

For years I would put my glock in the safe at the end of shift and think how easy it would be to just eat it and everything would be over. I knew 4 guys who did. Always pistol in the mouth for some reason. I got out and it was hard to do. I felt like I was a coward running away and I still do.

I respect all of you who say stuff about cops and the law. I know even today I get wound up when I am stopped and I never accept a bad attitude from other cops. I will give you a hint though. If you see the grumpy face it might not be about you or what you did. It might be a bad attitude or it might be a very stressed officer. You can meet grumpy with grumpy but you will get a ticket and you will both feel worse. Take the initiative before he/she starts. Smile brightly and say "Hi how ya doing. Did I do something wrong?" It wont always work but lots of the time you will get a warning instead of a ticket and that's money in your bank. Also you might have made a friend and you might be the reason someone goes home instead of to the morgue.

I remember my fave criminal was Tuey Lloyd a drug dealer and enormous Samoan. He was always funny. I remember talking to him when he was home sick after getting knifed by the Hells Angels (his competition) He got a call on his cell and said "Excuse me dude I gotta take this call outside, ya know... drug business." I loved Tuey he made me laugh.

I am typing this while my beautiful perfect angel wife is watching TV sipping coffee with no idea what I am typing. This forum is great for talking to people 10,000 kilometers away. I would never say this stuff to her. I would hate her to know how close I came to eating the gun. She would think she had failed me somehow but she never did. The truth is the reality of the criminal underworld is so horrible that it stuffs your head up.

OH yeah Tuey wouldn't make a complaint against the Hells Angels for stabbing him. He thought if you wanna be a heavy you dont complain when someone does it to you. They killed him 18 months later which made me sad but as he said Ya cant be tough like a girl ya gotta be tough like a man. (Hey dont blame me girls he said it not me)

Personally, I think all of Ayn Rand's books are terrific. I particularly liked "Atlas Shrugged". In fact reading that book (when I was about 22 or 23) changed my life and my whole outlook on business and capitalism in general. Powerful stuff!

The mocker is a great book too and so is the Fountainhead!

Speaking absolutely personally, for me it all went pear-shaped when the police went from being upholders of the Law to enforcers of it.

At that point they became set apart from the public - we should all be upholders of the Law.

The difficulty with your interpretation and offering of the citation above Phouc, is that the federal government repealed the mandatory 55 mph speed limit in 1996, and the report cited was written in 1992 - four years earlier. Had nothing to do with the repeal.

Try this on for size:

Research by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) found that when speed limits were raised by many states in 1996, travel speeds increased and motor vehicle fatalities went up approximately 15 percent on Interstate highways in those states

Numerous post 1996 studies came to similar conclusions.

Not in any way preaching for or against speeding. Just offering refutation of the premise you made.

I'll let someone else point out the holes in your 85 percentile argument.

Al

With Charity Toward None

You are misstaken, as evidenced by the responses on this thread, that there is a general hatred toward cops. On the contrary it appears to be just the opposite.

Also, and I not trying to demean, but it sounds like you need a vacation and quite possibly someone to talk to about your own apparent anger toward the people you serve. Seriously, you could be part of the problem as to why people sometimes have a negative view of the police if this bottled up anger is showing to the public during you stops. And if it keeps building...well people have gone off the deep end from work related stress and being in law enforcement has to be one of the higher stress jobs out there.

You are mistaken that this is a cop-hating board. You are also mistaken about the notion that I personally hate cops. I have no patience for corruption, whether it be from law enforcement, government officials, or even corporate officers. Police officers who write tickets that they know to be invalid are corrupt. Period. Corrupt police officers tend to make people distrust police as a whole. This is not a new phenomenon.

Also, distrust is not the same as hate.

If it makes you feel any better, though, I think I probably wouldn't like you. You sound like the kind of cop that's easy to dislike.

GJN
Thanks for your thoughtful posts.
I'm going to hold off telling my stories about cops, a mixed bag.

To the OP my experience with this forum is different. When I made a mild criticism about a cop we were discussing it seemed as if the whole of MV came down on my head.

Maybe because a lot of scooter riders think they're bikers, and bikers hate cops because they're always limiting their "freedom."

We're tipping ever closer to having a political discussion here. Please let's try to keep it on the correct side of the Posting Guidelines.

If anyone thinks pro/con discussions of Ayn Rand aren't inherently political, they didn't read the books right. Laws are not, in fact, based on what a community of people agree is legal. They are not passed with the consent of the community.

The United States is not a direct democracy, where every voter gets to vote on every decision that gets made, every law that gets passed and majority rules every time. Our federal, state and local governments are (for the most part), republics where we elect representatives who debate and vote and ultimately make these decisions for us.

So then, laws actually are made with the electorate's consent, because we elect the people who form them and are ultimately responsible for how they're enforced. (California is one of the few states where voters can actually implement laws and enact policy via ballot measures. If anyone wants to hear my opinions on how that's working out for CA, PM me.)

There are a lot of reasons for doing it this way. Aside from the fact that the majority (and particularly the majority of voters) can often be wrong, making every decision by direct vote would be a bureaucratic nightmare. Can you imagine having to vote on the speed limit of every stretch of roadway in San Diego? Then the city having to implement that?

It's also dangerous to argue that laws should be relativistically enforced and that LEOs should only pursue the most egregious and obvious criminals. If someone stole your scooter, you'd be pissed and want the PD to pursue that. What if they said, "We would investigate this, but someone else stole a car so we're going after them instead."?

I don't think many scooter riders relate to that type of biker.

I respect and admire all police Officers up to the point when they point out my non-law abiding discretions and cite me for them..... But, I quickly get over it and they regain my respect again.

ktmdriver, it's virtually impossible for the average citizen -- or anybody else for that matter -- to successfully fight a moving violation ticket in court. The cards are so fundamentally stacked against us. First, it's usually the police officer's word against the motorist. Everything else being equal, courts almost always favor the cop's word over the motorist's, even though the burden of proof lies with the cop/prosecution. Second, judges assigned traffic cases are almost always elected, and in one way or another, they must stand for retention. These judges know the single fastest way to lose their jobs is to start ruling against local police officers. Silly as it sounds, it's why our constitutional framers gave federal judges life appointments so they can issue rulings without fear of losing their jobs. Finally, something like 99% of motorists challenging tickets in court appear without an attorney and face off against a prosecutor. In the vast majority of cases, these prosecutors have handled hundreds of similar cases, they've tried numerous jury trials, and they know the system and they know the judges.

ktim, you actually sound like an honest cop who's simply tired of getting railed on. I'm not unsympathetic to your situation, if in fact, that is your situation, and I'm certainly not here to judge you. My only point is that when you tell somebody, "You can always take it to court and fight it," I think we both know what that means: that most motorists find little, if any, recourse in the courts. I'm not saying courts are corrupt or dirty. I'm just saying traffic court systems in many jurisdictions are fundamentally stacked against motorists' challenging traffic citations.

For the record, I want to thank Tyrant Jess again for providing this great website and this great forum. You do us all a great service by providing this meaningful and safe place to express ideas and opinions. And I for one appreciate it very much.

Yeah, but Ayn Rand's politics are the boring part.... the part that is interesting is the dark continent of the American Psyche that it travels through.

It is the equiv of Heart of Darkness, That Hideous Strength or 1984 is for the British.

What it does is show just how fucked up the three American virtues: Compassion, Creativity and Work Ethic, get when they come in contact with Politics.

I dare say any virtue becomes a vice in contact with Political Power...

Hi all,

First time posting, sometimes reader. Just wanted to post b/c husband (OP) is a little upset over this. I think he just loves Vespas and riding and likes all the other riders and wants the riders to like him, so when people say derogatory things about cops, he takes it personally. I just wanted to impart M2C here.

Before husband, I had my share of tickets (I've had to clean up my act). And although I really hated that sinking feeling when you see lights behind you, who is really to blame? I mean, getting a ticket really sucks, no doubt. Not disputing that. But even back in the day, I thought about this. If a cop secretly followed me around all day every day, I would probably get all kinds of tickets, going over the speed limit, rolling stop signs, etc.

Now, of course, we can all argue, "It was just slightly over the speed limit," or "No other cars were around." But what would it be like if everyone was disregarding the road laws? It would be like driving in Mexico or Italy. Don't know if others have driven in these countries, but it can be a little chaotic and I'll say maybe at times even dangerous.

Whenever I got a ticket, 9 times out of 10, maybe 10 out of 10, I deserved it. I never thought of it as, "It's my unlucky day." I always thought of it as, "I had a lot of lucky days of not getting tickets and it finally caught up w/me." It was a risk I took if I didn't follow the rules and I probably got away w/more than I got caught doing.

Now, sometimes maybe you can ask for a warning and if it's a chickenshit stop, maybe you'll even get a break. But if, say, you're on a cell phone, then sorry, but you deserved the ticket and I only wish the punishment were more.

I got rearended the beginning of this year and it totaled my car that I swear I just paid off the month earlier. I'm suspecting the guy was either on the phone, or worse, texting. No way to prove it unless I subpoena phone records and probably wouldn't even be able to do that b/c he admitted liability, so no point.

What I'm trying to say is sometimes people don't pay attention when riding/driving for whatever reason and getting a ticket is like a reminder to pay attention. I'm sure that when the OP pulls someone over for cell phone or running a stop sign, that it's not the very first time this person did it in their life. In fact, he's pulled some people over for speeding that got a warning from him just a week earlier.

There are endless people the OP pulls over that have no license. Come on. If I can get one, then there's just no excuse for others to not have one, except laziness or just plain bad drivers/riders, in which case, should not be on the road, especially when I'm on it!

There's just as many people the OP pulls over that have no insurance. How would you like to get hit by someone w/no insurance? Even if you have uninsured motorist coverage, it is usually woefully low. Most people have insurance. If there are those that pay, shouldn't that apply to everyone.

The OP pulled someone over driving a Mercedes w/expired tags. The car wasn't registered in something ridiculous like 6 months or more. Most people pay to register their vehicle.

When and where and for whom do the exceptions stop?

It's almost like killing the messenger. The laws exist and traffic cops are just there to enforce it. It really shouldn't be a problem for anyone who follows the rules. In the end, it is for your own and everyone else's safety.

Now, no one is perfect, for sure. And there probably are some cops who are real jerks. Maybe the guy he pulled over before you was cussing him out. Hard to believe, but cops have feelings, too. And I don't know about other states or even other cities, but cops don't seem too horrible here. I mean, compared to Mexico, or even other cities or states where cops are dirty and corrupt, we are lucky that for the most part, cops are ethical.

Anyway, my thoughts, for whatever they're worth. Hopefully OP won't be too bothered that I posted. I probably won't be posting much. I'd rather ride than post, but thanks to all those who are kind and understanding about this.

Ride safe and look out for those who don't!