One thing I don’t like about driving my big truck is that it’s a heat score — the combination of matte black, big mudding tires, and a winged skull on the door — and has on too many occasions opened me up for police harassment, the sort that makes you start using the word “pig” rather than words more polite.
So I’m driving to pick up Nefarious from a friend’s birthday party and there’s a police car following me. I’m driving politely and they have no reason to pull me over, but because I’ve been unfairly bothered before in this truck, I was nervous. I got to my parking spot, pulled in, and as expected, the police stopped next to me and walked up to my door.
“Can I ask why you’ve pulled me over,” I asked him, and he replied that he wasn’t prepared to tell me yet and he’d explain later, and before anything else he wanted all my paperwork.
I handed him my driver’s license and started to look for my insurance and ownership in my very very messy truck. I again asked him why I’d been pulled over and again he told me he wasn’t going to tell me yet. I found my paperwork just as he was starting to write me a ticket for not having it, and finally he was willing to tell me why I’d been pulled over.
“Your license plate was unreadable.”
“Well, it might be a little dirty from the street, but it’s completely readable,” I said.
He claimed to disagree, and said, “we couldn’t read it.”
I was pretty obviously annoyed with him and said, “I really feel like I’m being harassed — are you really willing to stand up in court and say this license plate can’t be read?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Alright, well I’m taking a picture of it then, because this is completely nuts.” — Here is the picture that I took during this conversation (this is the literal photo off my camera with no adjustment — in reality it’s even more legible than this):
I asked a couple pedestrians if they could read my license plate from a distance and they all could, which seemed to really piss the cop off (he shouted a threat out his window asking me if I wanted him to find more things to ticket me with) — I was a little unsure if he was going to try and figure out some excuse to actually arrest me, but in the end I was left with just a ticket off a complete BS pull-over…
Fuck the police.
35 Comments
That is some bullshit for sure. At first, before I scrolled to see the picture you were talking about, I thought it was going to be caked with mud. That’s really clean for this time of year!
This is completely ridiculous. I don’t drive so I’ve never dealt with traffic cop blues, but I can’t understand why they do this? Power trip? Boredom? I can’t understand how people can be so inconsiderate.
wow. gotta love cops. so are you going to court over this then? that should be interesting. hopefulyl he gets in trouble for wasting the courts time.
I can’t imagine he’d get in trouble… The whole system is corrupt, operates with the assumption that the police don’t play by the rules, and in general leaves a very bad taste in my mouth so I prefer to keep my distance when possible.
So to be honest, I’m not sure it’s worth the time, expense, and stress to fight a ticket that’ll cost me more to fight than it’ll cost just to pay the “corruption tax”, in order to have a symbolic victory over the BS.
that sucks. i’ve had that before on my motorcycle. i’m doing absolutely nothing wrong, and they pull me over. they always say its to make sure i have insurance because a lot of bikes don’t, but still…thay are *always* obnoxious about it.
it seem that policeman need fucking glasses.
report him to his boss or whatever.
good to take pics at same time.
This sounds like a rediculously absurd traffic stop.
If I close my eyes I cant read it either.
Maybe that was the jerks problem?
Fuck the POLICE
A.C.A.B
I have been arrested a couple times, for things i didnt do, but it salways near me and i saw it happening, But because
i am a rather tall guy i always stand up in crowds. and its always me who they pick.
cost me my job already twice.
They were probably bored and had nothing better to do than pick on innocent motorists. It’s the same here in the UK. Give them a robbery or a good murder and they don’t know where to start.
Your license plate looks perfectly readable to me, maybe the cop needed glasses.
The bloody filth.
What bullshit. How absurd. :( I know my husband gets some raised eyebrows about his Jeep, but this is terribly discriminating. Are we to now also drive “mainstream” vehicles so as to not appear out of place? If you had a little less on your plate, would you fight this ticket? I understand you being busy and not wanting to lose a day to the courts.
It is just same in the UK, yes indeed. Exactly the same thing happened to me some years ago: I got followed and stopped by a patrol car which had been lurking in a lay-by watching the traffic go past. At first I couldn’t believe it – Dirty numberplate?? So while they were circling round the car looking at the tyres and the tax disc, I just got an old rag and a bottle of water which I kept in the car and wiped it clean!
I got “let off” with a note to produce my documents down at the station (I hadn’t got the Insurance or MoT on me). The officers obviously had some sort of quota to reach in order to justify the amount of time spent on patrol, but their sort of petty behaviour makes you lose all respect for traffic police.
Man, we are in the same boat when it comes to pig harassment. I hate that shit. If cops would actually obey their laws and procedures and act like normal human beings I wouldn’t hate them so much but as it stands….
FTP
I can’t tell you how sick i am of cops feeling above the law, and for the majority of the times i have witnessed blatant disregard for the law has been when the police were behind the wheel. I live in a place with a major drunk driving problem, but on more than one occasion, i have been harassed by the cops just on a witch hunt for drunk drivers. They get behind my car, drive erratically and tail my car by a mere few feet all in an attempt to fluster me and make me make the mistake, even though they have just broken multiple traffic laws.
That’s quite fucked up! I’ve been fairly fortunate and haven’t been overly harassed by the cops in quite a while, but it doesn’t surprise me, unfortunately, that I hear stories like this too often.
And as you mentioned, it would probably just be cheaper to pay the “corruption tax” than have that symbolic victory.
A few weeks ago I was run off the road by a car who didnt check his blind spot. Once I pulled back into my lane I threw the plastic juice bottle I was drinking from out my window at the idiot driver. Turns out this driver was an off duty cop who promptly called his friends and had me arrested for mischief. No damage was done to his car, and he ran ME onto the shoulder. Now I have pay thousands in legal fees to fight the charge or I have a criminal record for life.
Fuck em.
Ha, my license plate is WAAAY dirtier. And my little mazda protege hasn’t been pulled over.
Wondering if they are mistaking the skull & batwing for a death’s head? Not that harassing a potential HA member is fine, but maybe offers a bit if explanation for his interest in your vehicle
(other than jealousy of course, hehe).
if you go to court, perhaps you ask for compensation for wages, inconvenience, etc for taking the day to go to court in the 1st place. if you can show the judge(?) this was some sort of harassment, maybe s/he would even give you some compensation for emotional disdress! hehe
…. personally i prefer retaliation.
a thought tho, less bricks more sex toys. so instead of a brick thru the window of a cruiser. perhaps a black dildo with a nice pink ribbon?
btw, do you think the cop would have acted the same if he really thought you were HA? i bet he would have been too busy keeping from pissing himself.
PS: i just saw Propaghandhi last nite. hot damn! they are on tour, check it out.
Wow!! I thought e saw some issues with our off-roaders and trucks here in the staes but that just boggles me. I’m in Oklahoma and we really don’t have much to worry about here, I’ve seen far worse a vehicle on the road held together with duct tape and bailing wire and it still gets by.
“… personally i prefer retaliation.
a thought tho, less bricks more sex toys. so instead of a brick thru the window of a cruiser. perhaps a black dildo with a nice pink ribbon?” -PETED3
True Story: When the police were searching my friend’s apartment for anything suspect, an officer reached for something purple and plastic-looking at the bottom of a laundry basket. It was a Dildo. As I recall, his exact words were “DUDE I JUST GRABBED A JELLY-DONG!”
Classic. [ftp]
Do you still have your old 33′s?
I agree with Twwly-Shannon loves to drive heat scores-guess how many times he was pulled over in the camo Porsche for no apparent reason (a car that was eventually “stolen” by the police).
I don’t drive so I’ve never experienced this at all. Nor do I do anything illegal, so I’ve basically never had any run ins-good or bad-with a police officer.
I don’t think I remember reading about what happened to the porsche.
AAAH! Thats ridiculous!
Here in South Africa they pull you over, in the case of my pops who drives a Harley, if you bike plate is too small. There isnt place for a bigger one! Anyway. Silly coppers!
Is there any way you can just write a letter to the court and attach the picture? We can do that here if it is obvious the case is going to get dismissed and it unclogs the courts a bit. Do you have another picture of the back plate with the cop’s car in view? Similar to the one you posted, but from the back so the cop can’t say it was taken after you cleaned it up (even though there is grit on there that wouldn’t be there had you done a quick clean-up job)?
I would have had the officer stand next to the plate and then taken the photo after thinking it over. I think if nothing else the judge would find it funny to see the cop next to the plate and the plate fully readable as it is.
I missed what happened to the Porsche but I’m sorry to hear it may be gone. I miss my 944 sometimes since it had decent mpg and was a good ride.
a lot of this relates
some kids are lucky to have had parents who have real talents to fix or make things – craftsman and artisans
others to have parents who are the rest of spectrum of human types and careers
on “turn on the tv world” these real people are hard to find – way too many cops and crooks -
there is no profit in this
Wow, you sure do have bad luck with your jeep. I havnt gotten harrased for my jeep yet. I have a Wrangler on 33″ BFG KM2s. Not as big as your tires but it does stand out.
You should have had the officer pose in the photo. Would have made for interesting evidence in court.
hope it all works out in court.
AGreddy…fuck the police! I’ve had something like this happen to one of my friends out in Cali…again, took pictures and had the whole thing dropped. If you don’t win a case like this, screw the system-all hail corruption and stupidity.
One more thing. I was ran off the road by some jackass when I was on my Harley and I made the mistake of calling the police. They met me at my home and yelled at me kept telling me to take my hands out of my pockets (its was 20 degrees, they ended up frisking me and giving me a sobriety test in my driveway. They were SO piss poor about it I couldnt believe it. I learned a lesson about calling the cops. I should have known better. This was the Leander police ( a suburb just north of Austin texas. What a complete joke. When I finally received a copy of my original complaint they had filed it as “false statement”… WHAT THE FUCK?
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