The man is in the window!
And pray tell, just how did the police make stops for speeding before the radar gun was invented? Stopwatches, maybe? :rolleyes:
That and he surely noticed the broken tail light and the broken windshield.
I got a ticket in Massachusetts from a cop going the other way at highway speed. When he wrote me the ticket, he nailed my speed precisely.
(The only thing he got wrong was the speed limit where he clocked me. In court, that saved me 2 points and $50.)
And, I’ll add, he was quite polite about it, as was I. I saved my argument for court. Perhaps there is a lesson there.
If you don’t mind my asking… how old are you?
I got stopped for speeding by a cop driving the other way also – in my case, on a back road, for going 11 miles over the speed limit of 30 (and I was).
Didn’t even get a ticket, just a warning, because I was civil and cooperative. He came to my window with his take-no-shit face on and lightened up immediately when I readily (and shamefacedly) admitted I was speeding.
By the end of the stop, when he’d pointed out the sticker on my license plate was two years out of date even though my registration was up-to-date, and told me how to resolve that, we were speaking quite amiably. Had I been an asshole to him even halfway as much as the woman in the OP video, there’s no doubt in my mind I’d’ve been lucky to get off with just a ticket.
I’ve noticed in general one thing about people who have to deal with the public as part of their job: If you treat them pleasantly, most of them will be pleasant in return. Funny how that works, innit?
I think it’s because they’re so grateful not to be treated like shit.
Come on Lissa, New Rome went down because the cops started the shit in the first place, by bringing in all the money. The corrupt public officials were dipping into the money the police brought in. Where the hell else was a three block hood getting all that cash? WTF, a third of the citizens were cops/public officials!
The graft and corruption and election BS all stemmed from the cops and their half million dollar a year speed trap. (oops, you are sure to quote Wiki on 400k, but I’ll still say a half mil) You know, unreported shit and all that…
Yes, I know you and Guin want to bust Catsix anytime you can, but she is right about New Rome, no matter how you want to spin it.
However, I am sure your superhubby deputy warden dude will have the definitive answer! :rolleyes:
You really think that cops, on their own, set up speed traps to rake in money that goes into the general coffers? Why would cops all of a sudden do that?
True story: Couple of years ago a couple of buddies and I went out to meet an old friend who had moved back out to Colorado. We had all been friends in our senior year of high school. We were in a town a little outside of Denver. One night we all got pretty hammered at a bar not far from where we were staying. The least hammered guy, our CO buddy, was driving. About 300 yards from home, we get pulled over by a cop who looks like he’s auditioning for a role in Walking Tall or something - real hard-ass attitude. He pulled us over for speeding and for failing to signal a turn.
The whole time, we were polite with him, and in fact we were laughing and joking amongst ourselves, even the driver, who had a right to be very pissed at us for driving our sorry drunk asses back, risking a DWI for his troubles. The PO is clearly trying to keep himself from laughing at some of our cracks; he’s working hard on keeping up the ‘Long Arm of the Law’ appearence. Finally he leans in, says, ‘ok, I can definitely smell alcohol here, how long you guys been drinking?’
We all look at each other, I pipe up from the back, ‘about 1983 or so?’.
Cop starts laughing so hard he almost drops his ticket pad. He ended up letting us go with a warning.
I’m 28.
And yes, in all of those years and the 12 years since I’ve had a driver’s license I’ve never actually known anyone who was pulled over for speeding by a cop who was in motion at the time.
Maybe it’s just not that common here in the Pittsburgh area.
Exactly. I wasn’t aware they could do that. Personally, I think the charges of election misconduct in refusing to seat a newly elected mayor, misappropriation of federal funds, the council setting up what amounts to a dictatorship, and a lack of any proper accounting methods sort of trumps a speed trap on the Bad Shit scale. However, if it makes everyone feel better, let’s just go ahead and say it was those damn dirty cops who did it all themselves.
I must say, I’m very flattered by the fact that the only thing people can find to attack is that I share my Hubby’s experiences.
Actually, it may be a combination of your age and the fact that your experiences are (apparently) mostly drawn from a metro area, one that would likely have been in the forefront of purchases of radar and similar equipment as it came out.
I’m in my early forties, and grew up in the DC area. As a kid, radar was unheard of. Police would pace you and then pull you over to issue a ticket, or even stand by the side of the road and simply estimate your speed. Their testimony was generally accepted in court, becase they had experience in standing by the side of the road and estimating the speed at which a passing car was travelling.
By the time I got my license at 16, radar was the “new thing”. Affulent police departments bought radar guns, and they were in wide-spread use around my area. But travels thorugh some of the back roads of Virginia still found sheriff’s deputies relying on their observational powers to issue tickets.
As time went on, costs of radar units went down, and more and more departments owned them. And today I learn that the pendulum has swung so far that a 28 year old not only is used to radar-only, but cannot imagine a world in which the police didn’t use SOME tool other than their eyes or their speedometers to peg the speed of a car.
Pretty interesting evolution!
IIRC, there is (was?) a law in Pa (Pitts?) that only State Police could use radar. Thus, if the locals don’t have (or have only just been acquiring) radar guns, I could see where one would think that.
FTR: I am also 28 and lived in da Burgh from 1996 to 2001. So, if there is any validity to my memory, I could very easily see someone from Pitts not knowing about radar gun use.
Not even all the cops in the Pittsburgh area are assholes. Granted, many of them are. But just as many, I’d bet, are not. My dad knows quite a few of them, being a funeral director. My great-uncle’s family knew almost ALL the cops in the area.
I suspect, some people, like the woman in question, who show attitude to begin with, get exactly what they deserve.
Please don’t misconstrue my statements as being entirely unaware of the existence and use of radar guns.
What I was not aware of was use of radar guns in a moving vehicle. I was already well aware of radar guns being used by cops in stationary cars.
Early on radar only worked if the car was parked. Now the cops have radar that works from a moving car. They can track a car pulling away or headed toward them.
:smack: :wally <- me
Yeah, I skipped some of the thread. I was responding to catsix.
I hate it when other people do this to me.
Sorry.
Not just estimates – most cops also have known distances along the main roads, and know how long it takes moving at the legal limit.
Like my cousin (a small-town cop) told me, ‘if they go past the lightpole at the CenEx gas station, and reach the entrance to the funeral home parking lot in less than 5 seconds, they’re speeding’. There were a whole lot of locations like that around town, where he knew how long it would take if you were travelling the legal speed. All he had to do was time the seconds, and he could catch speeders.
And it would stand up in Court, because he could give the distance & the time, and the judge and everybody could calculate the speed of the vehicle.
But he was also pretty good at estimating speed – that’s how he picked out which cars to check as they drove along.