My understanding of rule of law is that the cop isn’t the person empowered to decide whether a given person has a handicap that justifies parking in the blue spot. The cop can check the validity of the placard, but the fact that it was issued means official inquiries into the handicap itself are supposed to have been completed, at least until the placard expires.
And he FUCKING CHECKS by comparing the information on the placard to the driver’s ID.
Let me first say that my posting history here is hardly one of reflexive defense of law enforcement. I’m a retired hippy from the 60’s and have plenty of personal war stories of an anti-LEO nature. That said however, your “understanding of the rule of law” is at a tangent to the point.
No one here has suggested that the cop is empowered to decide who is or is not qualified to possess a handicapped person’s placard, as “qualified” may have been defined by the appropriate local jurisdiction. We do though note that any such “qualified” person must, by that very definition, actually be handicapped. So it is hardly unreasonable for a cop, approaching a motorist whose vehicle is parked in a restricted space without a visible placard, to ask “So, sunshine, what is your handicap?” This would be a perfectly legal, albeit perhaps less than totally polite or respectful, question.
To which there are an almost infinite number of legal replies ranging from the polite to the opposite, such as “I have incapacitating asthma, if you must know” or “Here’s my placard and my ID, these should suffice to answer your question”, or even “None of your fucking business; am I being detained?”
The cop will run the reply through the grist mill of his own experience, the bulletins (stolen vehicles, important suspects, etc.) he reviewed before going on duty, perhaps the complaints from nearby store owners and/or other handicapped people who may have been inconvenienced by miscreants taking up the restricted spaces, and perhaps – being (we presume) human – the condition of his ulcer or the way his wife said goodbye to him that morning. He will then decide whether, and how to, proceed. As mentioned above, this interaction may lead him to reasonable suspicion about an infraction (say, a parking violation) or a totally different crime (car theft, robbery of the nearby store, etc.) in which the parked person may be involved. And note here I specifically said “interaction” not “answer”. The manner of the reply is likely at least as important as its substance.
He may conclude that the reply to his perhaps deliberately provocative question was in character for a handicapped person legally parked, and go on his way without further ado, as actually happened in the instant case. In other words, seeing a possibly problematic situation, not being sure exactly what crime or crimes might have been committed or in progress, he FUCKING CHECKS, concludes nothing is amiss, and exits stage left. And he does so without even demanding “Lemme see your papers!”
Had LEO lead with that demand as his first option, somehow I suspect that the encounter would still have drawn the outrage of our OP. I can’t be certain, of course, but I believe he’s shown himself to be that kind of guy. Either way though, I’m enjoying the entertainment. Oh, and Nov 10, 00:00 to 11:59.
[quote=“CannyDan, post:322, topic:601263”]
No one here has suggested that the cop is empowered to decide who is or is not qualified to possess a handicapped person’s placard, as “qualified” may have been defined by the appropriate local jurisdiction. We do though note that any such “qualified” person must, by that very definition, actually be handicapped. So it is hardly unreasonable for a cop, approaching a motorist whose vehicle is parked in a restricted space without a visible placard, to ask, “So, sunshine, what is your handicap?”
Bolding mine. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t let this willful distortion of facts go uncontested, simply in order for you to make your point. See, there was never an issue of my placard being non-visible. This officer, upon seeing a young, fit man in a sports car; automatically assumed that the visible placard hanging from the rearview mirror was someone else’s and being used illegally. This was a judgment call that, in my opinion, he was out-of-bounds in making.
*I am making the assertion that his initial claim of the window tint keeping him from seeing the placard was BS
I respectfully disagree. There is a non-zero number of people abusing the handicapped placard system. I don’t need a cite for that, do I?
The law is written so that the placard is assigned to a person, and not a vehicle. You could take your placard to another vehicle, and legally park that [other] vehicle in a handicapped spot.
If it were the other way around, then to park in that spot, the only requirement would be that the vehicle merely needs the placard, regardless of whether or not the driver is handicapped. (As was discussed when someone is using a relatives placard to do their shopping errands for them.) The placard would not be transferrable to any other vehicle. (License plates are not transferrable, and neither are parking lot permits, DoD decals, etc.)
But anywho, the only way to know if the placard is actually being used by the person it was issued to is to check ID.
[QUOTE=Ambivalid;14438302This officer, upon seeing a young, fit man in a sports car; automatically assumed that the visible placard hanging from the rearview mirror was someone else’s and being used illegally. This was a judgment call that, in my opinion, he was out-of-bounds in making.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe one day you’ll be lucky enough to have another serious accident so you don’t actually look non-handicapped from a distance anymore and this viscous “profiling” you must endure will end.
Did anybody win the pool?
I find it amusing that asking about the nature of the handicap is more of a privacy violation than checking the ID. If he checks the first way, the cop walks away knowing the young man driving the sports car is in a wheel chair, in the second he knows Jamie Mc**** of 123 Ambivalid Lane has some kind of handicap. Personally, I find the former more private.
Speaking of BS, your assertion above (fixed the quote tag, made no other change to your post) that I deliberately misrepresented you needs to be retracted. You yourself make the point that it wasn’t necessarily visible, causing you to wave it out the window. As displayed below (from your OP):
You later back off on this, claiming that it must have been visible and blaming the officer for either not seeing it or claiming not to see it as an excuse for hassling you. Because, apparently, that better fits your outrage. But those were your thoughts, as demonstrated by your own statement. I didn’t misrepresent you, I merely paraphrased you. So, bullshit. Take it back, and take it back now.
I think I did. I believe mine was the closest to “today 3:20PM”.
I made it very clear from the get go that I didn’t believe my placard could possibly have been non-visible. It was hanging from my freaking rearview mirror. The “(or so I thought)” was sarcasm. Sorry I didn’t note it. There was nothing I could have done to display my placard in a more visible manner. And it would seem to be common sense, from a police officers’ perspective, to at least travel to the front of the car to check for proper tags before lighting a parked car up for parking in handicapped parking. Everything about that situation told me that he simply didn’t believe I was using that placard legally. Everything from the way he lit me up without even really making an effort to see the placard (because he actually did see it from the get-go), to the tone of his questioning “So come on, how are you really disabled?”, made me confident that that was the situation.
You said, very clearly that you assumed he couldn’t see it. Even before he got anywhere near your car, you were holding it out the window. You were not doing anything illegal so holding your placard out the window implies that you felt he couldn’t see it. Yet you then won’t back off the assertion that he could see it and was lying when he said he couldn’t. To me, that’s just having a problem with authority and looking for something to bitch about.
If you really thought it was visible you wouldn’t have been waving it out the window. Also, as for why he didn’t just walk around to the front to double check before turning on his lights, well, he wanted to make sure you didn’t leave before he could check. For some reason I feel I have to tell you that just because YOU know you wouldn’t leave doesn’t mean he knows that. If you were using the spot illegally (remember, he couldn’t see the placard) it’s likely you would drive away. At that point he was detaining you until he could make sure everything was in order.
You know, the next time he bitches about someone parking in a handicapped zone, and goes and asks them if they’re actually entitled to it, I’m so pulling up this thread.
Sauce for the goose and that.
And congrats, Canny Dan. Did I call it, or did I call it?
Post #43
Well, it needs to be said again. 
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, Ambivalid, the cop was doing precisely what you do, only he’s not a vigilante. Fuck off, you moron.
To add to that, the cop has the proper training to do it, knows what to do when things go wrong, is armed and protected, has backup and probably more important than anything else…the cop is working as an agent for the police chief with the blessing of the mayor.
Viscous profiling? Is his family from Innsmouth?
Vermont maple syrup country. Profiling is not only viscous, it can be a pretty sticky subject.
If there’s one thing Ambivalid knows, it’s vigilantes.
Bullshit. The only time I have questioned a person with a valid placard was in the case of a young woman who I had seen park her car next to me in the handicap section of a Planet Fitness gym and get out and exercise, run and lift weights without the slightest trace of disability or need for a parking space which was close to the entrance. That plus the fact that she was using a blue, permanent placard gave me reason to believe she was using someone else’s placard.
It would have been precisely what I had done, if I would have seen her pull up into the handicap spot, and, despite her placard, questioned her just on the basis of her appearance behind the wheel of her car. But that wasn’t what happened.
In the situation at PF, I wasn’t relying on my preconceived notions or stereotypes of what it means to be disabled when I questioned that girl, I was relying on visible evidence as well as contextual factors. The cop who questioned me only did so because I didn’t fit his image of what disabled people look like/drive.
No, I didn’t have all these thoughts formed at the time of the incident. My opinions that I have expressed here have, in part, been formed after the incident happened and I had had time to reflect on it. I had no clue why this cop was lighting me up, but considering the fact that I was parked in handicapped parking I thought of no other possibility than that of the officer somehow thinking I was parked illegally. So I waved the placard out of the window. It wasn’t a well thought out action, I will admit, but I just did it to show the officer that I was legal, and to try to save him the time of even getting out of his car.
And many many vehicles have darkly tinted back windows, especially vans; which are the rides of choice for many disabled individuals. Now many have disabled plates, true, but many do not. I’m not saying that the officer should have gone and checked the front after he had already lit me up and got out of his car; I’m saying that he should have done an appropriate survey of the area, which would include at least a front or side-view of the vehicle, before deciding that this car is not displaying a placard and needs to be checked out and lit up.