In honor of this thread (link inside) - share your worst traffic stop tale

[DS1]

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1538293

I was once tasked to get a rental car, pick up the two guys who were propping up my software company with dollars (Investors) AND a primary consultant from IBM whom they were trying to sell our software to. I picked them up at Logan, got them in the car. The SAME day they changed the speed limit signs in the "Fast Lane" from yellow (recommended speed) to White (this is the speed limit) I flew through the "Fast Lane" at 48 mph. The cop saw me coming, got out of his car and waved me over. I got a ticket. With about 300 million dollars in my back seat. He made me write my current address on the ticket using the steering wheel of this big rental. Then he tacked on some head-injury surcharge and the ticket worked out to about 405 bucks. Wow, I thought. That's a fuckload of money.

Then he let me go. I started to drive the rest of the trip down the Mass Pike. Then as I look in the mirror, I see lights flashing again, and this asshole is whipping through traffic until he gets behind me. What the fuck is it now? He pulls me over AGAIN, takes my ticket, scratches out the first fine, says he did the math wrong, and makes it $455!

:wtf: :hurts:

[Mutley]

1. This is the greatest.

At age 17 I was pulled over at 1am for a broken tail light. I sat in my car waiting for the cop to come give me my ticket. When he did come back to my car, he didn't hand me a ticket, he told me to get out of the car. I'm like :wtf: but I get out of the car. He asks if he can search the car, which I said sure, because I had nothing illegal in there. After the search, the cop starts asking me where I got this car, who does it belong to, why am I driving it. I explain to the officer that it is registered to my stepmother who bought it so I could use it.

The cop then tells me that the car is not registered, to anyone. I have no idea what to say. All I know is what I already told him, the car belongs to my stepmother...

So, four other cops show up (must have been a boring night) and they're all standing around me grilling me about where I got the car, etc. They're even threatening to arrest me for car theft. By this time I am freaking out, crying and trying to get them to believe me. Finally, one of the cops (a female) apparently took pity on me because she said 'Why don't we call her parents and see what they say?'

I was out past my curfew, but at that point, dealing with my parents would be much better than going to jail. So they call my parents and my stepmother tells them why the car isn't registered...

When she bought that car, SHE TOOK THE LICENSE PLATE OFF OF HER OLD CAR AND PUT IT ON THE NEW ONE!!! She never had it registered. :wow:

So, the cop wrote me a ticket for a broken tail light and for driving an unregistered vehicle and let me go. He said I was lucky because if my stepmother had not told him what happened, he would have arrested me. NOTHING ever happened to my stepmother, no ticket, no nothing. That all went to my record.

[DS1]

2. NICE double standard! It's your fault.

Always. :eyes:

Screw investigation!

[Mutley]

3. Right?

And when my parents tried to yell at me for being out late, all I had to say was, Well, YOU almost got me arrested!!!!!! They promptly dropped it.

[kenny blankenship]

8. Once upon a time

I was pulled over for an expired tag. I was so clueless then I didn't even know it was expired. Small potatoes right? An expired tag is not much at all--an eensy misdemeanor much like speeding only less dangerous. You take the ticket, go get your car legal and then show up in court on the appointed day with the required proof and promise to never do it again. Well in this case it turned out to be a little more complicated than that. See, I was pulled by a cop after I let my roommate out of the car. I was giving roomey a ride to work bright and early this morning and the cop stopped behind us at the curb so he got a good look at my plate. Now when I was being written up for an expired tag, the cop became really, really interested in searching my car. ALL OVER in my car. He searched the front and the back of course. He also demanded to search the trunk. I said "OK, search away" because in the first place I knew there was nothing to find so it wouldn't take long for officer Spikey to get the picture that I was a good citizen. And in the second place if he wants to search my vehicle the prick will just make me wait while he calls in and gets a warrant right? He had cuffed me, I should have mentioned, and then while rooting through the trunk and car some more, he made me sit in the back of his cruiser, cuffed, while the radio played Christian rock. He evidently didn't get the picture I thought was so obvious because the searching went on and on. I'd say it was at least 20 minutes I sat there with the bracelets digging into my wrists and my shoulders acheing from being twisted around. Now you'll have to take my word on this but I've never been in any kind of trouble before so I'm not taking this treatment particularly well.

Then he takes me to jail. Yes, we leave my car on the side of the road and this asshole drives me out to fucking county fucking JAIL. Me, who has practically never done a thing in my life, if all were known, to cause me to visit a courtroom, and certainly never anything serious. While I'm being "processed" and making bail, I have to chill in a cell. I get out in a while and then when I get my car back it's obvious it's hastily been taken apart and put back in place like that Continental in The French Connection. They fucking stripped my car down pulling the interior apart looking for drugs! Because of a plate violation?!?!

Then it hits me. My roommate whom I dropped off at a curb in full view of the cop, is black. And this is Georgia, outside of Atlanta.

When people complain of racial profiling and of different unfair treatment by cops because they are black I absolutely believe and understand what they mean. All I did was have a black friend and I got the special treatment and scrutiny.

[Mutley]

10. Thats really fucked up!

You had to make bail? Did they even charge you with anything?

[kenny blankenship]

12. Just the traffic citation for which I would go to court and plead guilty

There had never been anything illegal in that car--not so much as a seed. And if there had been they'd have found it with a dog I'm sure. So I had little hesitancy in agreeing to the search. I hoped it would allow me to get on my way sooner, as I thought it would take more like 20 seconds to see there was nothing to search for in the trunk rather than 20 minutes.

I think the officer was not really looking at me and my car, but instead at who I had let out of it. A white guy and a black guy in a car together: there just had to be a drug angle. He must have been so disappointed.

[Mutley]

13. God forbid white and black people actually fraternize with each other

for reasons other than drugs. :eyes:

[SarahB]

4. Here's my worst one:

Officer pulls me over and say, "Do you realize how fast you were going?" I say, "Yes, I do I'm sorry." He pauses, smiles, and then says, "Well, I'm giving you a warning this time, but don't let it happen again." :7

[Mutley]

5. You're lucky!

[hfojvt]

11. that was a good answer.

to the cop's question, but not to the OP's question.

My worst was. I had just moved to Northern Iowa from Southern Wisconsin. Had already gotten insurance (since Wisconsin wasn't a mandatory insurance state and Iowa is) and an Iowa DL, but still had Wi plates.

I had just worked ten hours on the night shift at my temp job. That was a job where I swear that I was hitting "the wall" if you know what that means from long distance running. It is the point where your body has used up its reserves of energy.

So I am just about out of town on a four lane, and a truck is passing me and a cop going the other way in a 45 mph zone. The cop makes a u-turn and the pick-up suddenly decides to make a left turn.

So the cop quickly turns on his lights and races up to me as I am slowing down to pull over. I quickly get the OJ off my lap, because that is probably some kind of safety violation, and get my papers out. The cop tells me that I was not wearing my seatbelt which is why he pulled me over.

So the ticket is taking forever, and I start gathering up my groceries in my car so I can get quickly unloaded and do about half a dozen things before I goto bed and have another ten hour shift the next night. (Keep in mind that I sat quietly for about five minutes before I got bored and impatient and decided to do that because time was a-wastin')

The cop comes back, and instead of giving me a ticket and letting me go on my way, he tells me to get out of the car. Then he is kinda in my face barking out question "Do you have any weapons in the car?"

Of course, I have no idea what he wants, and I hate to say "no" and have him search the car and find something he thinks is a weapon and suddenly he is saying things like "okay, you lied to me, now we are going downtown." I have no idea that I can prevent him from searching the car. So I remember that sometimes I carry a machete underneath my driver's seat. Why? Because I like to have a weapon/tool when I am walking through my woods and my woods are full of poison ivy, particularly my driveway. So why keep it in the trunk when it is much handier under the seat.

However, I do not know if it is there or not. Since I am standing right next to my car and the driver's window is rolled all the way down, the easiest way to find out if it is there is to check. (And I actually said to him "there might be a machete under the seat, let me check." Stupid, stupid, stupid, but I am not thinking paranoid. I just moved from Wisconsin, a small town where all the cops knew me as a businessman, and treated me like they worked for me, instead of like the long-haired punk I looked like.) Of course, reaching into the car to do this, makes this cop understandably very nervous so he moves to restrain me. I freeze when he grabs me. Then it is over to the trunk, where I am spread-eagled and patted down. While walking over there, I notice that there are about four cop cars around me. It seems like the whole police force was called out to deal with the "mad non-seatbelt user".

Then I get cuffed and two cops search my car. They find the machete in the trunk and tell me it is illegal to keep it under the seat. News to me. They say nothing about the broken pool cues in my back seat, which I keep there as weapons. While I was standing there cuffed, I asked if I could sit down before I fell down, so I was sitting on the hood of a police car while they did their searching.

Later, after I got home and walked my dog, I called them up. I asked them what their probable cause was for getting in my face about weapons and why the whole police force showed up. He said they do not need a probable cause and when they call for back-up, they do not know how many will show up (apparently there were no other seat-belt violators for them to deal with that morning). I said that I wanted an apology or I was going to start raising hell.

I had one on my answering machine when I woke up that evening. I spent many hours getting ready for the trial about the seat-belt violation at which time I expected to challenge his behaviour during that stop, but he did not show up to the trial, so the charges were thrown out.

Probably just as well. Three years later I took another seat-belt ticket to court and the assistant DA thrashed me in court. It is hard to win a game when you do not know the rules, and it is hard to win an argument when their rebuttal is "you can't say that". It sure does make it easy for them to avoid proving me wrong, simply do not allow me to make my point.

[mike_c]

6. boy, it's hard to pick one....

One night I was pulled over for a missing tail light while traveling north on the Dulles Airport Access Freeway just past Reston, VA. I was about 23 or so, and on my first date with a woman who eventually married me, oddly enough. Anyway, this FEDERAL traffic cop pulls me over and calls in my registration. He comes up with some sort of irregularity-- I don't recall what it was-- but he orders the car impounded. No ticket or anything like that, just impoundment. He ordered me to follow him back to the airport, where I parked the car in an impoundment lot. This is WAY the hell back behind the airport, which itself is located way out in the country. No phone available at night. No, he cannot give us a ride back to civilization. He made my lady friend and I walk back to the main highway-- a couple of miles at least-- where we were able to hitchhike back to town (Sterling Park, for those unfortunate enough to know the area). Needless to say, this is also on my list of worst first date stories.

Second story, again from my misspent youth-- fast forward several years, and the same lady and I are married and have a child. We were living in Charles Town, WV, and I worked in a Washington DC suburb, which was like, I dunno, 70 miles away or so. One night a bunch of us at work finished a long project-- lots of overtime-- and I stupidly agreed to join everyone else at a local bar to celebrate. I was already sleep deprived and had a LONG drive over the mountain facing me. So naturally I got utterly shit-faced. About 9:00 or 10:00 we stumbled out of the bar and sat in the parking lot to roll and smoke a nice fat spliff for the road, after which I popped in a tape, pointed the car more or less due west, and tromped on the accelerator.

I got pulled over by a Virginia state trooper about 15 minutes out of the gate. He politely informed me that he'd pulled me over because I was weaving from one side of the road to the other, and asked whether I'd been drinking. Now, at that particular time I undoubtedly smelled like a brewery, had a still smoldering roach in the ashtray, and probably couldn't have sat upright in a STATIONARY chair without a seatbelt. No, ossifer, I explained-- I'm just a little tired! He inspected my license and registration, shone his flashlight into my bloodshot eyes for a few minutes, then SUGGESTED I STOP FOR SOME COFFEE AT THE NEXT EXIT AND WISHED ME A SAFE TRIP HOME! I have no idea how I made it home, but I did.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

7. we were being tailed by a convoy of police

that call themselves the "secret squirrels" in daytona beach shores, after spending a very long time in a head-shop.

eventually we were pulled over for "going too slow". driver had a warrant out for an unpaid ticket. everyone had to get out. asked if anything was in the car, but they didn't have to ask to search due to the warrant. but theysaid ifanyhting was found we could all go to the pokey because of "conspiracy" or some such bullshit. during the search of the car they found the lower half of a pool stick, threw it on the hood of a cruiser and said "concealed weapon". one cop frisked me and told me i smelled. they wound up searching the car over and over again. i deduced that we had been surveilled at the head-shop and singled out.

they found a bag of new whip-cream chargers and balloons. they asked what those were for. my friend who was already under arrest said, classically, "whip cream and a birthday party". anyway, for the sake of brevity - we wound up bailing him out that night - the pigs got the money they wanted and everybody went home.

if you ever vacation in Daytona, do not go south of Daytona to Daytona Beach shores. They are fucking fascists and YOU WILL WIND UP IN JAIL.

[mike_c]

9. I live a charmed life....

I was once stopped by a county cop in Northern Virginia for "going too slow." I suspect he really pulled me over because my car looked like it wouldn't pass a vehicle inspection conducted by a blind man. I had a kilo of Jamaican bud sitting on the seat next to me, wrapped in plastic and duct tape. This was 25 years ago, mind you :) . I flipped a sweater over the dope as he walked up to my window. When he asked me why I was going so slow I explained that I'd seen him following me in my rearview mirror and wanted to make sure I didn't go too fast. He checked my docs, gave me a lecture about impeding traffic, then gave me an on-the-spot inspection. He wrote me a ticket for "faulty equipment" or some such violation because my car had a "custom" rear bumper- it was a VW bug and the bumper had been replaced by a wooden beam. Cost like $15 or so. Whew.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

14. damn that was close

nice story. you were very lucky.