But would you let your daughter marry one? (if you ain’t from the South you probably won’t get this)
I bet if your middle class house got robbed, you’d be screeching because there wasn’t any police presence.
Can’t make you happy, can they?
Most cops will tell you that in their experience, law-breakers who commit those ‘real crimes’ you mentioned are also likely to ignore regulations requiring working taillights, current license plates, licensed driver, etc. So by pulling over cars with such items, they are stopping someone who is more likely a ‘real criminal’.
Once stopped, they can check the driver for current license & insurance, check the passengers ids for outstanding warrants, observe/smell the occupants for liquor/marijuana/drugs, look in the car for weapons/drugs/contraband, etc. Basically, they can do a mini investigation right there at the side of the road.
And cops spend their time doing this because it is successful – they frequently catch a 'real criminal; by stopping them for a broken taillight. Nearly any cop can tell you stories of pulling someone over for a minor item, and then finding that they have caught a major criminal. It happens very often; that’s why cops keep doing it. This is how the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was caught – driving with expired plates.
It’s a pain to the ‘normal’ citizens when they happen to get stopped for this, but it is a very effective way for cops to catch the ‘real criminals’.
Oh, fucking 'eh SnakesLady, maybe we can find something that we can agree on someday? Maybe corpse fucking is against both of our moral compasses??? 
Anywho… yes, I agree with basic services like police presence when it comes to robbery of a home. I fail to see the connection between that and my wife getting a fucking $58 ticket for a headlight. Couldn’t she get a warning?
Fair enough. I just meant that by “church going” she wasn’t a drug dealing murder. Perhaps you can come up with examples of church going people who are drug dealing murders.
Your argument will convince me to withdraw my example…
How 'bout church going pedophiles?
Drug dealing bunches of crows? I don’t think I’ve seen that.
jtgain, what evidence do you have that the cops aren’t busting ghetto drug dealers (why it that the only crime idiots can imagine going on in poor neighborhoods?) at the same or even a greater rate than they’re pulling over scofflaws like your missus? I’ll bet, if your wife was dealing drugs, and they’d found out, it would have been at least a 59-dollar fine.
The answer to your question is as obvious as it is insulting: people scream bloody murder when they want to report a minor crime and a cop doesn’t pop out of the nearest mailbox, but scream even louder when there is a cop nearby and they happen to be the only ones in sight breaking the law. Insulting, because it makes them out to be spoiled morons. Obvious, because, well, it’s obvious.
If she knew she was going to get a warning, would she replace the headlight?
I don’t dispute that at all. Of course it you stop people for minor traffic infractions you can nab people for bigger ones. Hell, if you entered people’s homes at random with guns drawn, I’m sure you would find even MORE drugs, illegal guns, and wanted persons.
But, I am talking about a country in which our founders envisioned that we could be free from police molestations in all but the most serious circumstances, and with warrants when it is practical.
These silly laws (headlight out, going 30 in a 25 zone) serve only to make us available to interrogation at the most minor infraction.
And the bad thing: $58 for a headlight!!! Fucking 'ey, I paid $15 twelve years ago for going 55 in a 30…no points…
If she got a fixit ticket, she surely would. She didn’t even know it was out…
Exactly. ‘Why aren’t you out finding the guys beating up their wives’ doesn’t carry the same clout, but has far more relevance and applies no matter what neighbourhood your are in, even if the initial version of the complaint was valid.
If they are busting ghetto drug dealers, then it isn’t working. They are still there.
And, I know, speeders and headlight violators are still there.
But when you have limited resources, say you have a family problem where you son and daughter are soon to be parents and your wife is a drug dealer, but on some mornings you have one cup of coffee too much:
Do you…
- Focus your resources on the family
or
- Try to eradicate coffee from the world and use the power of government to fine coffee drinkers…
My town likes #2…
You’re right of course. $58 is a bunch of money. Enough to buy at least one new headlight and a spare to keep in the trunk.
A buddy of mine is a LEO, and had a self-righteous fuckstick complain that they should get a warning. He asked if they really wanted a warning. They said yes. He said that if he clocked them again, doing 55 in the same 35 zone, they’d get another ticket. Enjoy the warning.
Typical tyrannical reponse from a person in a position to give it. I’m sure your buddy speeds and gets off when his “buddies” pull him over…
Two things come to mind.
First off if your wife can’t tell when the lights on the front of her car are all of a sudden 50% less powerful than they have been since she bought it, it might be time to turn in her driver’s license. Don’t give that we have street lights bit either. What you never pull up to a building or to a wall, or to your garage door to park? She didn’t notice that instead of two bright pools of light on the wall (one on each side) that now there was only one bright pool of light? :rolleyes:
Seriously, she needs to fire up that third brain cell when driving.
Secondly, I will pass a long a little wisdom I got from a cop buddy about 40 years ago. If you ever think you got a ticket you did not deserve, before you bitch, think about all the ones you did deserve and never got. Then smile and thank the officer.
More “cop buddy” bullshit.
So, when I pull into my driveway, I don’t analyse the light pattern relflecting off of my garage door. Obviously, it should put me in the same level of local enforcement as the drug dealers downtown.
Coming home from work; bringing the kids home from school; coming home from the late night church dinner. All on par with drug dealers and murderers, and deserve equal police presense to protect me from my neighbors who have a low beam headlight out.
Well thank you very little, and fuck you very much. I appreciate your loyalty to your bosses, but pit your ulitimate goal: REVENUE ENHANCEMENT!
If that isn’t your goal, then why don’t you join me in a campaign to donate all of my city and county’s traffic fines to the charity of YOUR choice?
I’ll sign right now…will you?
Oh, the terrible tyrannical police peoples. :rolleyes: Did you totally miss post #9, kinda like your wife misses half the frontal vehicular illumination?
Perhaps you two share faulty perception issues.
I begin to suspect that your “town” is largely populated by your imaginary friends. Lacking caffeine and its gift of momentary alertness, you and they may have missed an important principal of police work: that the neighborhoods that bitch the most about police protection sometimes get it, with the result that their pet crimes get caught and punished with the same frequency they seem to hope their “suspicious person” call gets: with the swift removal of whatever undesirable was unlucky enough to walk past their house. They seem to want police protection that is as biased as they are – not always a safe assumption.
I congratulate you and am sorry for your son and daughter’s upcoming parenthood, and your wife’s choice of profession, but from all the rhetoric there seems to be only one grandchild your spouse’s ill-gotten gains must support, even with whatever genetic difficulties he/she/it may encounter. If you choose to raise it with a modicum of attention and intelligence, drugs will be much less a concern to him/her than headlight-less oncoming traffic. Try to set a better example, Okay?