I don’t even see any residences around there. What’s your beef with this place, Grude?
I was driving alone from the hospital to home at about 2 a.m.
I was stopped at a red light and then proceded to take a right. A cop who was speeding down the road (and I say speeding because they typically do that late at night when the streets are empty) came up abruptly behind me and turned on his lights. Instead of immediately pulling over I drove another 100 feet and turned into an empty parking lot to be off the main road.
He ran up to the car and began yelling at me asking why I didn’t immediately pull over. I said I thought it was safer getting off the road but he said “No, when you see lights you pull over NOW!”
He then asked if I knew why he pulled me over. I honestly said I didn’t.
He said when I made a right onto the main street I had cut him off. I made no arguement that he was obviously speeding and quickly came up behind me. I think he was just mad that I got in his way.
He then saw my eyes looked pretty red and started asking if I had been drinking or if I had taken any drugs. I assured him no and explained that I had worked all day and I was visiting my wife who was recovering from a c-section and my two daughters who were born premature and were in the NICU unit. I even showed him that I still had the plastic visitor writband on from the hospital.
He didn’t say much but just said “I’ll be right back” and went to his car.
Then he came back and handed me my $180 ticket for reckless driving.
Just because there is not a poured concrete sidewalk there doesn’t mean you can park a car there. It’s called “easement”, and just as you cannot legally build a building right out to the street, you cannot legally park a car on the easement.
I live around the corner. One side of the block is all residences. I’ve lived in this neighborhood most of my life, and until this asshole moved in, nobody ever parked there. It is impossible to walk up that side of the street without being forced into the street because he is taking up the full sidewalk. I live on the block, the bus stop is on the next street up, on the same side. So this ass clown can illegally park, I have to either walk in the street or cross the street twice. I’ve talked to some of the little old ladies who live on the block, and they can’t walk their dog around the block safely.
My beef? He usually has at least one car or truck there, sometimes as many as four. One time he had a van parked there. I had to poke my head around the van into the street to see if it was safe to walk into the street, and nearly got decapitated. Just west of this place is convenience store/gas station and it is one of the busiest in the city, and people are coming out of the Quiktrip heading east at a fair clip - especially police cars.
Oops, sorry grude- I meant gaffa :o
I thought you were asking me if I had a particular grudge against the place.
Yep, to disperse and mark “protestors”. Or, you know, just non-protesting university students coming out of a memorial church service for people murdered in police custody, and hence guilty of “being in a group of more than 5 people in the centre of Cape Town while Not White”. Potayto, Potahto.
From the film Touch of Evil: *A policeman’s job is only easy in a police state. *
Worse that happened to me? The guy administering my first driver’s test was an asshole. He was unclear in his instructions yet berated me for not following them. Then he berated me as being the worst driver he’d ever seen when his now angrily yelled instructions caused me to not notice a car.
I get that you need to test driving while distractions are around. But normal driving doesn’t involve a guy you have to pay attention to telling you exactly what you have to do. And, yes, I deserved to fail for pulling out in front of a car. But you don’t have to be such a jerk about it, telling me I was the worst driver he’d ever seen and that he wasn’t sure I would ever be able to drive. I refused to take another test until the guy retired, which wasn’t all that much later. (I think he was testy because he had been doing it too long.)
Yeah, it’s not all that bad, relatively speaking That’s why I didn’t have problems with cops in general until I wound up on a cop forum and found out how all of them seemed to agree on some basic immoral actions. It’s not just one bad cop when the cops agree they did the right thing, even if it isn’t all cops (and I know it isn’t.)
I do know it led me to find people complaining about cop mistreatment more credible. I even believe the paranoid guy who said that some guys harassed him and even shot at him but were friends with the police and thus didn’t get any punishment. Before I just assumed that the cops just didn’t have proof.