How Should I Feel About This "Traffic Stop"

Great Debates
1

(after submitting this, I realize it maybe better belongs in great debates, my apologies and mods, feel free to move)

Let me preface this by stating that I have never been pulled over in my life for anything other than 2 or 3 speeding tickets (all deserved) and - generally speaking - would consider myself before this incident as “pro law enforcement”.

That said, here is what i find to be a interesting scenario and one that has left me a little confused in terms of police tactics, profiling and what I now see as straight revenue generation.

I am driving home last week in chevy suburban on a country highway (one lane each way) through a lakeside town where every local knows there is at most times a marked officer who sits in his car and - literally - 50% of the time i drive through he has someone pulled over.

The speed limit is 55 and i am in a row of vehicles about 6 long. I see him well ahead and note i am driving about 49-51 so definitely not speeding. After we pass he pulls out, hits his lights, passes a few cars and then gets behind me, pulling me over.

I am buckled, I turn off the truck, grab my licenses, reg, and insurance and roll down my window and place both hands on the wheel. He takes an excessive amount of time (close to 10 mins) then exits his car, stays at the back and is shining his flashlight through my back window (tinted but legally). He then proceeds half way up the driver side toward me, sees me extend my hand with the papers from the steering wheel to the rolled down window to give him my license and paperwork. Instead of continuing, he walks to rear again (still using flashlight in every window), comes to passenger side and - rather aggressively - taps my passenger window (that is up) with his flashlight.

I have to turn my key back on to roll down the window and then we have the following dialogue:

Officer - Do you know why I pulled you over (no greeting, rather aggravated tone)

Me: No sir officer as I am pretty sure i was not speeding

Officer - You’re right, you were not but you do have a license plate lamp out

Me: So you are pulling me over for a bulb out on my license plate?

Officer - Nope… but I now have probable cause - you would be surprised that stuff we find after a probable cause stop.

Me: (weak chuckle) - well you won’t find anything else here

Officer - I’ll be the judge of that, not you. License and proof of insurance. (at his point my glovebox is open and he is searching with his light throughout the truck)

Me: (Hand him the license and paperwork)

Officer - (reviews paperwork) - sir your insurance card is expired

Me: Well let me look around I know i have valid paperwork here (30 secs go by)

Officer - Wait here i will be right back (about 7 mins later - comes back with a ticket for no proof of insurance ticket)

Me: (I actually found the insurance card) Here is the proper insurance

Officer - You will need to show that to the judge on your court date, you did not present proper and valid insurance so i am writing you a ticket.

Now here i will freely admit i start to become agitated and as I ask him a second time why he can’t just look at my insurance card so i do not have to make a court date. He responds as though I am speaking another langauge and just says “sign here”… to which i say “are you protecting and serving or just tax collecting?”

He chuckles and tells me to "get that light fixed, it is illegal to not illuminate your plate at night, hands me a copy and says “have a good night”.

Now here is the real kicker for me… at this point I am thinking I am lucky he did not write a ticket for that light, and while it sucks to have to make a court date because the officer just wanted to be a dick, at least it will not cost me anything.

But when I arrive home, i leave the truck running to go look at the license plate light and find that the plate has two bulbs and while one was out the other was very bright and the plate was clearly visible. The bulbs are on each side of the plate and because he was on the shoulder going the same direction as I was, could see that one bulb was out even though the plate was fully luminated!

This obviously makes his comment about probable cause all the more relevant and clear that he was simply fishing for trouble. It also explains WHY he did not/could not write me a ticket for my plate not being visible.

So… i get that he was “letter of law” in his right, but to me - as a middle aged white guy - this really bring the whole “profiling debate” closer to home and i am not sure how i should feel about it.

As an afterward to this story… I called a close friend of mine who is a Police Officer in San Diego and relayed the story… and before i barely got started he said “let me stop you here and make a few guesses”… you were either in a small town or some resident community" (I respond affirmatively) he says… "yeah we have a name for those guys, accountants with guns… “its all about revenue and you were taxed”

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Moderator Action

Moving thread from GQ to Great Debates.

3

Doesn’t surprise me in the least. Fight the ticket, these assholes are going for a shotgun/volume approach. Most of their targets are out of towners/out of staters, who will be too busy or inconvenienced to fight the ticket.

4

If you have the time, I’d fight the ticket, and possibly report the officer. Maybe contact the media, too, and perhaps the local tourism office (if there is one). Not really more than a nuisance, but still a waste of public resources, IMO. Probably won’t make any difference, but I’d be annoyed enough that I might try it anyway.

5

Revenue generation. Avoid driving through that town if at all possible.

6

Yeah, go fight it in court.

7

Certainly fight the ticket and even report him to the precinct, not because he was rude or mean or just out to write tickets, but because you presented him with valid proof on insurance, to which he refused to look at it and write you a ticket anyway.

Yes, it does appear that they use things like blown license plate lights as a revenue stream as well as to give them a reason to talk (or smell) people. But it is in fact illegal so you don’t have a leg to stand on. Also, as for him coming to your passenger side, that’s common. He does it to stay out of traffic, but also because it catches occupants off guard since they’re not expecting it.
And if you’re pro-law enforcement, I’m sure you’re well aware that it’s normal for them to be looking in your car with a flashlight during the stop, both contraband and to see if there are other occupants in the car.

Yes, fight the ticket, but also, mouthing off to a cop will almost never get the results you want right there on the street, however, it is a good way to talk yourself into handcuffs.

Also, if his answer to “So you are pulling me over for a bulb out on my license plate?” was really “Nope… but I now have probable cause”, then I’d really think about going down and talking to someone. If he didn’t pull you over for speeding and he didn’t pull you over for the light, then why did you get pulled over?
PS, I wouldn’t bother with contacting media about this unless you have a dashcam with audio.

8

Charger, IMO, the citation was not issued constitutionally. UNTIL the stop is completed he must afford you Due Process. Refusing to revoke the citation after you showed proper proof of insurance, negates his PC to issue it. Fight it.

9

In Texas we would call this LEO encounter “Tuesday”

10

To be clear, I never thought anything was done illegally and in fact i think i stated as much in my OP. The post was more about how clear it was that he was just fishing for anything that would result in:

  1. Contraband or DUI
  2. A reason to run me through the system to look for warrants, violation, et al.
  3. Generate revenue

My - admittedly - smart ass comment about protecting and serving was ill advised but that is all i can think about when pondering the stop.

Gone are the days when the police really were civil servants who’s stated goal was to “protect and serve” not “find a way to arrest or make money”. I know its nieve and ridiculous in today’s culture to think that way… especially when half our prison’s are privatized for profit (which is a whole other WTF) but I thought it was worth posting.

I plan to just take that day off from work, go to court and get it dismissed early and spend the day doing something enjoyable. :smiley:

11

You can fight the ticket, certainly. Make sure beforehand that the law doesn’t say that both light bulbs have to be operational. Since he wrote the ticket for no proof of insurance, you might have a better chance of fighting that - show the judge the valid card, show that it was valid at the time you were stopped, and you might beat the ticket. Unless the cop says “no, he never showed me anything but the expired insurance” and if you don’t have any way to prove that you did, you might be SOL.

Presuming that a ticket for a burned out license light bulb is less expensive than a “no proof of insurance” ticket, you might get it bargained down to that.

Yes, it sux. As many have pointed out, this is a revenue generator.

Regards,
Shodan

12

Because I tend to drive somewhat on the fast side, I’ve been pulled over probably a few dozen times over the years. The officer has come to the driver’s side every single time.

I realize that’s still a small sample, but maybe the officer coming to the passenger side is common in certain parts of the country but not others?

13

Either that, or they were looking for a specific make/model of vehicle and your vehicle matched the description - that was my thought when you talked about him looking in the back and coming to the passenger side. You had the bad luck to match the description of someone else up to no good.

Or yeah, he’s a dick and looking to meet his ticket quota/revenue generation.

14

Not much debate here. Sorry that happened to you. Such minor insults make me realize how truly infuriating it would be, if I were not white, and had them occur more regularly as the result of profiling.

15

This is a good point. This has never happened to me, but if it did, it would make me very angry (I feel angry just that it happened to someone else!), even though it’s just a relatively small nuisance in the scheme of things. It’s hard to imagine how I’d feel if something like this happened to me multiple times a year.

16

Multiple times a year? I have friends for whom this sort of thing is a weekly occurrence. It infuriates me, and I’m not even the one inconvenienced.

17

I got a revenue generating ticket driving through Mt Lebanon (near Pittsburgh) once. The ticket was for speeding, but I had pretty good proof that I wasn’t speeding, so I fought it. I had a receipt with time stamp from purchasing gas down the road from the VASCAR speed trap. I went back to the gas station when there was no speed trap and tried repeatedly to get my old Toyota Tercel up to the speed that was measured, and no matter how hard I pushed the car going up the hill from the gas station, I was always at least 10 mph slower than my measured speed. I assumed officer or mechanical error.

I took a day off work and brought my 4 year old daughter along for a “civics lesson”. The court’s waiting room was crowded with locals who were ticketed for wrong side of the street parking. They all had five dollar bills in their hands, along with $80 tickets. The routine was, plead guilty and get a reduced fine of $5.

The locals warned me that I’d be found guilty, no matter what, since I was from out of town, and they were correct. When I presented my evidence, the judge freaked out on me; saying that I came into his town driving like a maniac, endangered their children, then called his police officers liars. I was found guilty.

Afterwards the police officer found me in the hallway and apologized. She told me she believed my testimony and felt bad about the situation. She was new on the force and I was only her second speeding ticket. She explained how she thought she’d screwed up the device. She then offered to let my daughter come out to her car and play with the lights/siren, so all was not lost.

18

It’s not clear from the OP whether the stop was racially motivated. I’m thinking not. Giving the cop the benefit of the doubt, maybe they were on the lookout for a vehicle that matches the description that OP was driving. That might explain the 10 minute delay before the cop approached the vehicle, and the abundance of caution used to do so. Would have been nice if the cop wasn’t such a jackass and explained the cause for such unusual delay. Cops have bad days, just like everyone else. Problem is, they can make that someone else’s problem. Which might be the explanation in this case. So yeah, time and circumstance permitting, fight the ticket and ask the judge to have the cop account for the delay. Not so much for an explanation, which may not be forthcoming, but to make the cop think twice about being such a dick in the future. May not work, but you never know – the judge might just be fed up with that particular cop already.

19

Now, if the dashcam showed that the light was in fact on, but the officer still used that as the excuse for the traffic stop, and then proceeded to search the car and find a kilo of drugs: would that be grounds for the case to be thrown out?

20

Not fucking good enough. She’s a liar. She’s part of the system. She’s a revenue collector. If she had a single gram of integrity (and obviously she doesn’t) she would told that story about screwing up the device to the judge. But she didn’t. I wouldn’t have let her get all friendly with my daughter. I expect more of people my children might look up to.