Once again, moronic cops intrude into my life. I was just pulled over, on totally specious grounds. Came out of “Ralphs” grocery, turned left out of the store and went through a yellow light. Legal as eating a hot dot at the ball game. Cop pulls me over. Gets me out of my van, makes me sit on the curb, etc.
“Well, we pulled you over because your plate came back as a convertable.”
My ass. They didn’t have time to run my plate.
“And you went through on a yellow.”
That is legal, piggo.
“And you have an equipment violation.”
Really?
“Your license plate light is out.”
I’m sorry, I will fix it!
Having run my plates and my license he found nothing, and had to let me go. Just for fun, I checked my plate light. Functioning normally!
That I shouldn’t be pulled over when I violated no law. That I shouldn’t be made to feel like a criminal and sat down on the curb like some gang banger because some Burbank cop decided that the constitution didn’t apply to me and he could try and go an a fishing expedition, and pull me over without any probable cause.
Cite? There are these new things, they call them computers. These computers can talk to other computers. On a slow day it takes about 2 seconds to get information back on a plate.
My guess… the cop ran the plate, made a typo, and got back a conflicting report, that the car was supposed to be a convertible instead of a van. So he stops the car, checks again, realizes his mistake, and lets Stan go.
Just be happy the typo didn’t show your car as stolen.
I remember from driving school that so long as you have enough time to get through the light before it turns red, you’re fine. In fact, if you’re close enough to the intersection when it turns yellow that you would have to break hard to stop, you’re supposed to go through on yellow.
A good friend of mine used to live in a shitty neighborhood that was known for having a lot of drug dealers live/work there. I’d say around half of the times that I visited him after dark, a cop pulled me over because my license plate light was supposedly out, ask me a few leading questions about why I was there and who I was there to visit, then give me a warning. The first time I was naive enough to go replace the plate light without testing it first. After the first time I always checked it. It was never actually out.
Yes yes, but how many people who go through yellows really can’t stop safely versus the number of, “goddammit! I don’t want to sit through another fuckin’ red light!” people who plow through the intersection when the light’s been yellow long enough for them to safely stop?
Good point. I was reading your post as “You’re not supposed to go through yellow lights at all” rather than “You’re not supposed to gun it to make it through when you could have safely stopped.” Sorry about that.
Quit acting like a whiny drama queen. I know people who have had bad cops dance the funky chicken all over their civil rights, and believe me, you have no fucking idea what it entails. We are talking life-altering problems here.
IANAL, but you screwed up. At least here in Virginia, and I’d be surprised if it weren’t true there, a cop can’t just blanket as you to step out of your car because he feels like it, he has to provide a reason. In fact, being in the car is generally the safest place for you to be for both of you.
Second, at least in Virginia, he has to provide a legitimate reason for pulling you over, and making up a broken license plate light or that your plates didn’t match your car doesn’t work. If he can’t provide a legitimate reason, he has to let you go. If he says your plates don’t match, your registration disproves that. If he says your plate light is out, it’s easily verified as well. On a couple of occassions I’ve had cops pull me over for bogus reasons saying my tail light was out, when it wasn’t, or that I was speeding, when I wasn’t, or insisting that I must have stolen property in my car without a good reason and that he could search it without a warrant, when I didn’t and he couldn’t.
Also, as others mentioned, going through a yellow isn’t “perfectly legal”. If you had time to stop, you should stop, and that is open to interpretration.
Sounds to me like you possibly went through a questionable yellow and he either fat fingered your plates (and he should have asked you for your registration first thing ANYWAY) or, more likely, he was giving you leading questions to try to get you to incriminate yourself. Bottom line, know your rights and don’t stand for them to be violated or jerk cops will walk all over you. Regardless, you didn’t get a ticket, so use it as an opportunity to learn what your rights are when you’re pulled over in your area so you can better handle a similar situation in the future, and just let it go.
I once got a ticket for running yellow in Falls Church Va. I do not know if the law there has changed as this was many years ago. It was illegal to Enter an intersection on Yellow, but OK if it turned yellow after you entered. If the light changed to red while in the intersection the fine was for running a red light. Ticket was $10, Red would have been $75.