Even if you got a cop in a really good mood, why on earth would he do this? If I were a cop, my first thought would be that you’d call the station and claim that I stole items from you. Screw that.
My next thought would be that anything you give me could be replaced. That credit card may be one you never use and house keys cost like $2 to replace. Screw that.
My last thought would be that you get the benefit and I get the hassle. I’d have to keep up with your stuff for the rest of my shift while I’m running all over the city. Then, if I don’t lose your stuff, I have to remember to turn it in at the station and explain the situation to the people there. All to save you 3 minutes of time. Screw that, you’re here now. I’m not going to jump through hoops for your convenience. I’m going to write your ticket and be done with it.
I’m not sure. It’s not what happened. If it was just a few minutes I probably would have waited. If it was more than 10 or 15 minutes and without me seeing him I probably would have called the non-emergency number for the jurisdiction that I was in and asked for advice (maybe escalated it to a supervisor/sergeant if the person who answered the phone gave me an ‘I don’t know’ type answer).
This is one of those things where I don’t know if it’s legal, I just know that it happened and the last time I asked a ‘can a cop do this’ question everyone got all pedantic on me and the thread died with everyone just saying ‘well he DID so clearly he CAN, end of story’.
It bugged me that had I started out the question with “Hypothetically could a cop…” instead of “This happened, can he…” and left everything else the same it might have actually been answered instead of people just arguing about my wording.
I find it awful to think that if not arriving on time can kill your career or cause other serious issues in your life, you wouldn’t leave early enough to get there with plenty of time to spare.
I find it awful to think that people on this message board don’t deal with real life, where running late is something that happens, no matter how well you plan otherwise.
I’m not twisting his words, I’m responding directly to the question he asked. Offering to give an officer “something valuable” so that he doesn’t write a ticket is pretty much textbook bribery. Tossing on the bit about ‘I’ll come to the station later, really’ sounds like the ‘clever loophole’ idea that people with little legal knowledge come up with. Doing an action that the officer perceives as a felony implicating the officer to try to get out of a traffic ticket is just a bad idea all around, you’re likely to either have a pissed off officer who expected a bribe or an offended officer who wants to either bust you or teach you that bribes are bad.
If I was answering the specific bit that you posted, I’d point out that the collateral items he listed are not actually valuable (I can get a replacement card, key, and registration for a fraction of the cost of a traffic ticket) even if they’re real, and that the officer has no way of knowing whether you’re handing him an expired or stolen credit card, random or stolen key, or the registration to a car that’s not yours as ‘collateral’. Letting a potential wanted felon go because they can present a credit card and key is not good departmental policy. He would need to run your info and write down a record of the items and what’s going to happen before he could accept anything- which would take longer than running your info and just writing a ticket in the first place.
Exactly; in real life, if it will kill your career to show up late one time, then you either show up very early every time, or expect your career to be killed and plan a backup career accordingly. People who’s career is one late arrival from death generally are people who have already had running late ‘just happen’ to them many times before.
Yeah, but I’ve learned a lot from this thread. Best course of action is to be professional and not give the cop any problems. I could see how they need to suspicious of everything. And yes, I’ll leave early next time, but…
Does the answer change if you were the witness to an accident that didn’t involve you and the cop wanted to take your statement? I mean, the previous responses are predicated on answering to your own responsibility after disobeying traffic laws. But if you’re an innocent bystander who had the bad luck of being a witness, you can’t expect the cop to hold you up, can you? In this case, maybe offering some type of collateral might come off better because it shows you want to help in any way you can, not that you’re trying to make the cop’s life difficult. Or is it the same answer as before?
Why would you need “collateral” in that case? You’re just a witness, not a suspect.
ETA: And giving the officer this worthless “collateral” (credit cards have no value, keys are cheap) does, in fact, make his or her life more difficult. Taking custody of property is a pain in the ass.
In the real world if you’re running that close for a time-sensitive job that being pulled over for 15 minutes makes you late, you didn’t plan accordingly. Something like a huge pile-up on the highway where you can’t get off and are stuck for an hour plus in immobile traffic, sure. You can’t plan for that. But if you’re timing your arrivals for a critical job such that 15 minutes will screw up your schedule that badly? Yeah, bad planning. This is the sort of thing I and many other of us in the working world have to account for.
I read something similar recently. The author stated that people seek causal relationships where none exist to avoid responsibility. You wouldn’t believe that holding the door open for someone led to you getting a promotion. Similarly a traffic delay didn’t lead to you being late, a failure to commit sufficient time did.
I read and even quoted the OP saying that in the post you’re quoting from, I’m not sure why you chose to repeat it. Handing a cop ‘valuable collateral’ so that he doesn’t run the normal checks on a traffic stop and write you a ticket now looks exactly like bribery if you don’t show up to collect the ‘valuable collateral’ later on, or looks like a cop being absurdly incompetent if he accepts a stolen credit card and old key from someone who turns out to be a wanted fugitive.
As I said before, offering a cop ‘valuable collateral’ to get out of an immediate ticket is indistinguishable from bribery. Having a convoluted story about how you want to post bail to the cop (hint: you don’t post bail to a cop) doesn’t help that. And a credit card is not actually ‘valuable collateral’, especially if you’re trying to hand it to the cop to avoid him running the usual traffic stop checks.
OP’s question was
Offering to give an officer “something valuable” [to hold] so that he doesn’t write a ticket right now.
This is not textbook bribery. He’s not asking for any reduction in punishment (ticket), he’s asking for a slight delay in receiving said punishment so that he can get to his concert on time. So, yes, you were twisting his words.
Offering a public official something valuable so that he doesn’t carry out his duties as he normally would in a way that is favorable to you is textbook bribery. Putting a fig leaf of ‘but I will come to the station later and you can write me a ticket and hand me back the valuable thing’ is pretty laughably unbelievable, especially since if he doesn’t show up the cop keeps the valuable item. (You keep ignoring the chain of events if he doesn’t show up for some reason). It gets even more absurd to deny bribery when you look at the actual traffic stop procedure - the only way the offering ‘something valuable’ will actually save the guy time is if the cop doesn’t question him, doesn’t run his license and plates, and doesn’t fill out any paperwork for accepting the valuable object - which the cop would only do if he was planning to just pocket the valuable item.
If you think I’m being a big 'ol meanie and twisting his words, try this “I will give you something valuable to hold on to if you don’t write me a ticket right now” game on a cop in real life and see how fun of a day you have with their interpretation.
I’m not sure what you think a separate arrangement is, but the answer is NO if it involves giving anything at all to the officer. Traffic officers have this amount of discretion – they can let you go altogether, they can give you a warning (usually in writing), they can give you a ticket, or they can escalate it to something more serious. For instance, they might escalate it if you offer them something that might conceivably be construed as a bribe.
Anything you hand a cop as “collateral” might be construed as a bribe. Just don’t do it – under any circumstances whatsoever.
FYI, sometimes a warning might be a deferred ticket that will be canceled if you take corrective action. For instance, if you’re stopped for a burned out headlight, the officer might give you a ticket, but if you bring evidence that the headlight has been replace to the police station or the traffic court, the fine will be waived.
There is another way a cop can help you informally in some circumstances. I was once stopped because my vehicle registration had expired, and the officer told me I could not legally operate the unregistered car. And of course I asked how I was supposed to get home without my car. He carefully explained to me that if he witnessed me driving away from the scene, he would have to stop me again and might have to arrest me to prevent me from illegally driving it. And then he carefully explained that he was leaving now, that I should wait until he was gone, and then whatever I did – wink, wink, nudge, nudge – he would no longer be around to witness it.
In a direct answer to the posit “Will a police officer accept collateral as a means to allow me on my way in a hurry?” I would have to say no, absolutely not.
In today’s world I could not imagine any officer straying beyond a very limited list of accepted discretions. Anything that might cause him to have to stand in front of a superior and explain his reasoning would be quite frowned upon. Officers today are under more pressure than ever to do things ‘by the book’ to cover their asses as it seems their activities are more beneath the microscope than ever before.
In the USA or any other first-world country police aren’t going to take collateral/bribe and send you quickly on your way, don’t even try. That will just confuse the situation.
Police often ask where you are going. Take that time to politely and briefly explain your situation and you might get a quicker ticket, or be given a warning. Yes, it is totally up to the officer what he does and no you can’t argue with him on the side of the road.
Best thing to do is be way early and not break any traffic laws, then you don’t have anything to worry about.
Perhaps while you’re explaining to the officer why he should take responsibility for your whatever you give him and then make special effort to track you down later because your appointment is so important, you should also mention why if the appointment is so important it wasn’t important enough for you to leave enough time to get to your appointment without speeding/running red lights. Seriously you’re saving very little time but greatly increasing not only your stress level but the stress levels of everyone who is driving near you.