Comments

1

There is another "get out of jail free" card. Your Drivers License, in the lower right hand corner, says Veteran if you have served honorably in the US Armed Forces and showed your DD214 at the license office when you renew.

Get out of a ticket, free.

6

It should be the expectation of every citizen when they are stopped by the police they will be accorded equal treatment.
Rich or poor, black or white, veteran, co-religionist, family member should have absolutely no bearing on the situation.
It seems painful to even have to articulate this simple point but apparently basic civics are no longer universally understood.

9

@6 - "If little faults proceeding on distemper shall not be winked at, how shall we stretch our eye when capital crimes, chewed, swallowed and digested, are brought before us?" - Henry V

Tolerance of a minor infraction is a sometimes courtesy from an officer. Not always.

11

Re: Trump/US refusal to join the global vaccine effort, I don't think it means we won't get one in the US, but it may mean we might get a COVID-19 vaccine that is rushed out (for electoral considerations) with minimal to no Phase 3 trials that may not be all that effect and might be harmful.

@4, keep in mind that the violence is happening on Trump's watch, with police violence escalating in little doubt due to the perception that the administration has looked and will continue to look the other way on police brutality, particularly against Black Americans.

14

Get a load of that cheering woman in the molotov cocktail clip. That's the essence of these thugs who impersonate protesters.

26

I remember about six years ago I was in San Francisco near the Inner Sunset community down Junipero Sera to Ocean to take some classes at City College SF for nursing while I was caring for my dad. I didn't have much free time and was delivering pizza on the side for the extra income.

Anyway, I found that I could avoid the terrible traffic on Ocean by going up Portola and Santa Clara to Monterrey. Despite there being several stop lights, the traffic was much better and the neighborhood way more affluent, and I saved lots of time getting to school that way.

One morning, I was driving to take a test. I was on an empty residential road driving a black 2003 Buick Century through one of the most affluent parts of San Francisco, a place where the homes still have massive lawns. As normal, I made my way up the hill and stopped at the consecutive stop signs, making my way harmlessly to work.

Suddenly, from two blocks back and AROUND THE CORNER, a copy came with sirens blaring. With nobody else around, I brought my car to a stop and laid my arms on the side of the window as I had been taught to do to make sure my hands could be seen and the cop wouldn't get jumpy. He walked up, glanced at the empty pizza bags in my back seat, the biochemistry notes hastily scribbled falling out of my bookbag, and gave me a good long look.

He said, "I clocked you going 3 MPH on those stops." I suddenly wondered if his radar would have been sensitive enough to clock 1 or 2 MPH, but said nothing. And I had stopped, but he wouldn't have been able to tell that visually from where he came and how far ahead I was. It was bogus, and he knew it, and I saw the guilt on his face. I said sincerely, "I thought I stopped, but I guess if you say I didn't then I didn't."

His expression looked pained and guilty. He said, "Look, I'll give you an extension on the ticket. They got us looking at this place real close, they say their kids have been running into traffic and we're watching it closely." He seemed conflicted and I saw what looked like tears in his face when he saw that my address was local, my beat up car not fitting the setting. We both knew something was wrong, but went with it anyway. I got out with the ticket and eventually paid it, but it made me wonder about how much bullshit is disproportionately enforced to keep our society so stratified and insulated from the realities we perpetuate through passive acceptance of injustice.

29

@1 - not to mention the little bear stickers in the back windows to show that the driver is or is related to a LEO. This is how graft gets started, with the little things. https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/That-bear-sticker-on-the-window-signals-Hey-1245852.php

31

@29 It'll get you a warning for speeding instead of a ticket. It won't get you out of something serious, like drunk driving.

34

@1 - Meh, that may be of some influence but not as much as you would think. There are plenty of vets (I am one) who are jerks or minor scofflaws...or even major ones; Timothy McVeigh was a vet. The union card thing is certainly more beneficial, although still not a guarantee.

While those things and "Thin Blue Line" and "Back the Blue" stickers on your car (which could have been placed there by someone else) may be a bit helpful in whether you get a ticket or not, the most helpful thing is to just be polite. I'm not saying to kiss his/her ass, because that's annoying in a different way, but just be everyday, ordinary polite like you would be to any service person.

Do that and if the violation is sufficiently minor, you stand a good chance of driving away with a friendly warning, sometimes just verbal. (We didn't have written ones, but most places do. They have no effect on your DL)

A dirty secret is that most street cops (not assigned to traffic) in cities do not like writing tickets. Now, if they're assigned to a unit tasked only with traffic enforcement, there's no getting out of it, but only bigger cities have those, and even then they're a minority of officers on the street. Motorcycle cops are traffic enforcement only. Small town cops are different; traffic enforcement is all they really have to do.

So, in cities, chances are you've been stopped by a cop who would prefer to give you a warning for a minor violation anyway. Make it easy for him/her to do it. Oh, and always have your insurance card!

35

@26 - A Buick Century isn't too out-of-place.

36

@34 Morty, I really enjoy your posts. You're one of the very few posters here who make the comments worth skimming. Thank you for your contributions. :-)

37

@32 There is only one "poll" I trust and that's the betting line.

Before Dem Convention:
Trump +130
Biden -110

Now:
Trump -130
Biden +100

I actually have no idea how accurate these lines can be, but it's interesting.

38

@36 - Aww, Thanks!

39

@34 Good advice but only if you are white. If you are black the rules are completely different.

42

@2 all it takes to drive a bad guy away is a blast of a siren? If you would have told them that before now the violence around CHOP probably wouldn’t have happened.

@13 deputizing OSP for Fed cases is so don’t have the optics of the Marshal Service lining up to arrest them. They're still limited to federal charges in those arrests and that doesn’t mean the US Attorneys office is going to pursue those cases. They haven’t brought that many charges against the protesters considering how many have been arrested or detained. The feds were arresting people to hassle them in most cases.

@28 does not know how the vaccine partnership works.

47

39 - Not with me.

Where I worked over 20 of my nearly 30 years was nothing but black and brown. In fact, if you approach most people politely and without Oakley's (which I never, ever wore) and an overbearing attitude, it's amazing how quickly most people become polite anyway, even people inherently suspicious of the police. It's weird.

Now, being polite is no guarantee of walking away minus a ticket, it's just the method that gives you the best odds of doing so. I realize it shouldn't matter, but these are human interactions, so of course, it does.


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