Nothing has changed. However, I assume that by “private property” you mean driveways, fields, etc… “Private property” that is accessible by the general public (like a grocery store parking lot) is usually fair game to sit in.
Preposterous. This argument would also make unmarked squads illegal. You have no expectation of privacy when you are out in a public place (like a highway). There are no similarities between an officer hiding while clocking cars on a public road, and placing a bug onto a private telephone or room.
Pulling someone over is also a good deterent. They can’t speed while pulled over on the side of the road. Just detering someone when a squad is around isn’t always good enough. Some people need to get cited, maybe several times, before they start driving responsibly on their own, even when there is no police car present.
A lot of neighborhoods in my area now have the automatic radar units posted instead of the ordinary speed limit sign. These show you your speed, and flash if you’re over it. I think this is valid, and seems to be working; more and more of them are going up. Dashing down the freeway with the pedal on the floor is dangerous enough. Speeding through neighborhoods puts everyone at risk: small kids, bicyclists, people pulling out of driveways, etc. On surface streets, slow down.
We also have photo radar/ticketing. Alas, people are always trying to beat red lights at intersections, particularly on left turns. I don’t know any other way to cut down on the accidents except to post lots of police officers, which is both expensive and diverts them from other duties.
On California freeways, the police are pretty reasonable. I used to zoom around at 80 mph; that will get you ticketed (as it did for me). Most of the time, though, the cops are too busy chasing after people who treat 101 or 280 as their own personal Laguna Seca. That is dangerous. True, you’re most likely to kill yourself, but you may also take out someone completely innocent.
yeah, I don’t like the “snooping” nature of speed traps. I think it’s more and more necessary to provide even a small margin of safety, not just against pure speed, but against unreasonable speed in heavy traffic.
Off the point really, but I think that speeding might make an accident worse or even be the cuase of an accident. But I also think that being behind someone who is clearly sruggling with their own self esteem while trying to merge onto a highway can be equally as dangerous.
It all boils down to predictability for me. You don’t expect someone passing you like you’re standing still and you don’t expect to have to pass someone who IS standing still.
People expect to be passed by cars going 10mph faster than they are and they also expect to pass people going slower. The focus should be on drivers who don’t expect to be sharing the road with others.
To PKbites, yes, you are correct, privately owned but public open places were fair game. I never saw the need to use them, but I know of one officer who would pull his unmarked car into a used car lot at a corner with a stoplight, and get red light runners. And as far as traffic enforcement, most of us were all in favor of radar detectors. they are great. We could be at the dounut shop, leaveour radar units on, and everyone slows down while we eat jelly-filled bismarks. The idea was to slow down traffic. if eating donuts worked into it, swell. Unfortunately we had to write tickets too. Nobody with a soul likes handing someone a piece of paper that says half of your pay this week goes to the state so they can party hardy. Part of the reason I got out fifteen years ago. The flip side is there has to be some control over traffic, about a year and a half ago I got nailed by a Wisconsin State Trooper, going 67 in a 55 zone. First ticket in 28 years. Thething that sucks is I was guilty as hell, and I was in a hurry and knew I was guilty. Plead not guilty, then plead to ten over, same fine,three points instead of four.
It depends. Some dipshits need to be relieved of a few bucks. And not all cites are traffic. During the summer I write so many public urination & disorderly conduct tickets I think my hand is going to fall off.
But I’ll tell you what: I write very few speeding tickets and I’ve yet to write a seatbelt cite. My bounty hunt is red lights. And improper registration. Dumbasses that have 9 or 10 “year” stickers all over the plate so that the plate can’t be read. God I flunkin’ hate that!:mad:
to PKbites, Lmao! what you say is so true!I was a street officer, not stricty a traffic cop, and Itake it you are the same. Yes there are a lot of dipsticks out there! Istarted the job thinking I was a bit above average intelligence, but soon leaned that average intelligence was about the same as a box of rocks. You are right, some just beg for a little smackdown. And the ones that give a hard timeon a traffic stop make it easy, you never feel bad giving a ticket to the loudmouth. It in polite ones that you feela little sorry about havingtogive a ticket to. And by the way, Are you the one who gave a ticket to the guy in the blue Lesabre on hwy 81?
to PKbites: actually the guy who nailed me(and I was guilty) is the husband of the lady that made the wedding cake for Mrs. Seenidog and I. He was just doing his job. And I thank you for still putting on the blue suit, like I said I gave it up fifteen years ago. It is a lot less dangerous fixing computers. You have my utmost respect, I know it is not an easy job.
Wait, so the “American Cops eating Doughnuts” thing isn’t just a movie cliche?
(Not attacking you, seenidog, I just thought it was one of those things that existed only as a cliche and not in real life. I’ve never seen a uniformed police officer in either Australia or New Zealand with a doughnut, FWIW.)
it is cliche, but close to the truth, When I was a cop, coffee and donuts. When I drove truck, coffee and donuts. Now in IT, coffee and bagels I don’t know where that bagel thing came from, but there it is. And always with cream cheese, I hate cream cheese. give me a jelly fiiled bismark anyday.
To Martini, no offense taken, I mentioned the donuts becauce it is a cliche, but at the same time, there is some truth there. At three in the morning in a small town like I was in, the only one awake is you, your dispatcher, the rail road dispatcher, and the baker.
So the dispacther is nailed to her seat, the RR lady does not have much wiggle room either. But she does make a great cup of coffee. So it became a routine, at around four I would hit the railway station for a large thermos jug of coffee, zip over to the bakery and fill their cups up, pick up the first donuts off the line, zip back to the RR station, drop off a few donuts, hit homeplate to give my dispatcher a cup and a donut, then back to the RR station to give her thermos back. And any problems with the donuts were reported promptly. It was quality control to protect the public interest. That is my story and I am sticking to it.
haven’t read the whole thread, my apologies… but i talked about this very subject with a co-worker the other day (he’s a retired opp officer.)
what he told me (and this holds only for the province of ontario) is that a cop can “hide” i.e park a cruiser in the median, or on the shoulder, that obscures the cop car from oncoming traffic, especially because of a curve in the highway/road and still issue valid speeding citations - though a if a cop’s cruiser has taken any special effort to be obscured by any brush, signage, or other man-made structure, the speeding charges are almost always tossed out of court – if they are contested. as he explained, this is not regulation, but rather common law, and can vary from county court to county court, though it is accepted practice for the majority of the province. one trick he pointed out is that opp will often post a decoy car pulled over near an interchange, with marked car & flashers parked behind it; and opp officers posted with radar on the bridge, with direct radio links to cruisers waiting to spring in any direction.
also, he confirmed (as i had heard many times before,) that any speeding citation for 20% or less over the posted limit is routinely dismissed (except as a probable cause for impaired, stolen vehicle, or dangerous/reckless driving charges,) due the combination of error in both radar equipment and the average speedometer.
A village near my home town has a long straight country road leading into it, which takes a rather abrupt curve just after “urbanized area” begins, with obvious reduction in speed limit. As it happens, the house dead ahead as you’re approaching the curve from out of town belongs to someone affiliated with the local police department. The village hit on the idea of buying an extra patrol car and having it detailed as a cop car every few years – then parking it adjacent to the driveway of that house. This gives them a spare car for when one of the regular patrol cars needs maintenance, and does amazing things for speed enforcement at a potentially (and historically) dangerous curve-- at a relatively low cost to the village.
Just to clarify, BOTH of those restrictions apply to local law enforcement only, and NOT to the Georgia State Patrol. The State Patrol is free to hide, and free to use radar to ticket you even if you are less than 10-mph over the speed limit.
Also, the 10-mph over-the-limit thing only restricts tickets based upon speed detection devices. Local cops can still use pacing (following along behind you to determine speed) to issue a ticket for going less than ten MPH over the limit.
The statutes cited by amarone (along with a raft of other restrictions on local police) were enacted to address a problem of local police setting up “speed traps” designed primarily to enhance the revenue stream of the local government through fines rather than out of any genuine concern for public safety.
Clearly, someone issued a ticket to one legislator too many.
They do that in Illinois all the time.
Milwaukee County parks an empty squad (no manequin though) at various points on the freeway, too. Also, there are radar speed check boards on the freeways in Milwaukee County that run on K-band, setting off every fuzzbuster within 2 miles.
All of these things appear pretty effective for getting people to slow down.
One of the sneakiest things I’ve seen was an unmarked squad that was a Dodge pick-up truck. I saw it while driving through Walworth County, though I don’t know which department it belonged too. While speeders are looking out for Crown Vics and Chevy Impalas, this things was nailing people flying by it on the interstate.
The dept. I’m on had a mini-van that was an unmarked squad package, but it wasn’t used for traffic enforcement. It was just a supervisors vehicle. But in the rare instances when he used it for a traffic stop people shit when that thing lit up with red & blue lights. Nobody expected a mini-van to be an unmarked squad.
Some years ago we had a Buell motorcycle squad. Though it was fully marked, coming up from behind it one couldn’t see that it was a police bike. Lots of folks would come flying up from behind it and then hit the brakes when they realized that the crotch rocket was actually a police squad.
I talked to a town cop in Oklahoma, and he mentioned that a lot of the convenience stores give free coffee and donuts to police officers, as a way of increasing the chance of a police officer being in or near their establishment. If this happens in lots of places other than BFE, Oklahoma, then I imagine you’d tend to see a lot of cops with donuts and coffee.
Plus, you’ll note that a donut is much easier to eat on the go than, say, a cheeseburger or a bowl of penne pepperoni.
I remember reading about the police in Wilmington, NC, catching speeders while using radar from a bucket truck bucket above the roadway, with the officer dressed as a utility worker with a hard hat, and also while shooting the radar thruough a hole in the side of a large cardboard box in which s/he was hiding. The box was in the bed of a parked pickup truck. There were “chase” cars or officers down the road a piece.
Those reported incidents were on US 17/74/76 near the center of the city, where the speed limit on the road was 35 mph but the “85th percentile speed” was over 40.
IIRC, the 85th percentile speed is the speed at or under which 85% of the traffic is driving and is the speed at which federal standards dictate the speed limit be set. Had the ticketees hired a competent lawyer they might have gotten out of it on that discrepancy alone.
