The story behind the picture on the wall

My squad sergeant called me into his office one day several years ago. When I arrived and--per his instructions--closed the door (gulp!), he threw a photograph onto the desk.

It was a photograph taken by one of those infernal speed cameras on a highway not too far from our station.

It shows a car. It's a police car. It's clearly visible as one of ours.
It also shows the date, the time, and the vehicle's speed: 123mph.

The speed limit on that section of highway was 50mph, so I was summoned one fine day to explain to the sergeant how it came to pass that a cruiser signed out to me on that date and time was photographed traveling 73mph over the posted speed limit.

Oh--and a speed limit sign was clearly visible in that picture, just to make it all the more farcical.

"Well you see, Sarge..." I began. It didn't help that I was a relative newbie and still on probation. I paused, reflecting on the fact that my career might well be hanging in the balance.

"Go on," he said. "I've been waiting for you to come in and explain it all day, and I expect that this is going to be good."

And for a moment, I was at a loss. Why the hell would I have been going 123 mph? The date was over a month ago and this was the first I was hearing about it. I couldn't remember that day. What was going on that would have made me drive like that? The only reason I'd ever do it was if...

And then I remembered. A call had come out for an officer in trouble in our neighboring precinct. Our dispatcher had put it out and as luck would have it, I was the only one not already on a call or a traffic stop of my own. So I pulled onto the highway just before 2AM and punched the gas to the floor. I'd forgotten all about the presence of those stupid cameras and wouldn't have cared in any case. One of our own needed help and I was the only one available.

That night I'd made the scene in pretty good time, arriving just after our guy had finished kicking the ass of a punk who'd swung on him during a frisk and then knocked out that punk's cousin after he'd decided to dip in and jump our guy. Hood rats tend to be cowardly when there's just one of them, but when they have numbers on you they get brave, and they'll jump you if they think they can outnumber you. well that had happened here, and it was still simmering when I arrived in a cloud of brake smoke and burnt transmission fluid. A couple of other local mooks were crossing the street to join in, but on my arrival they changed their minds and took off. I didn't even get to hit anybody so I just helped our original guy secure the two that he'd cleaned up and I watched his back while he searched punk #1's car and recovered a small quantity of dope to augment the stash that he'd already taken out of that knucklehead's pocket. I transported one of the two to our lock-up for him and had forgotten all about that wild ride until the sergeant threw the speed cam picture on his desk and demanded an accounting.

So I told him where I'd been going any why, and as soon as he confirmed it with a call to Dispatch, he looked at me, smiled, and said "Good job". Then he proceeded to have the picture framed and it hung on his wall until he retired. I don't know what happened to it--I sure would have liked it--but it appears that he decided to take it out to pasture with him. But he was old school and a real cop's cop, so I won't begrudge him that photo. Hell, I'd even have autographed it if he'd asked. Step off, Jeff Gordon. You and that NASCAR crowd ain't got nothing on a cop on a mission to back another cop. Because that's how we roll.

Savages dance while four better men die

Fuck the City of Oakland. Straight up.
I don't mean the police officers there, or the firefighters, or the other couple of dozen people who live there who actually have jobs and no arrest histories, but the rest of them--the mouth-breathing, liquor-drinking, dope-smoking, wife-and-child-beating, welfare-getting, ex-con losers like these scumbags standing across the street from the scene where two police officers were murdered by a parolee and yelling "fuck the police".
Ultimately four brave, selfless police officer were murdered by parolee Lovell Mixon before other officers put him down like the rabid dog that he was. Meanwhile, the surviving officers have to put up with taunts from this band of mutts?

Screw that.

There was a time when my department actually had balls. Had something like this happened back then, we'd have had something for the savages. At Roll Call the next day, every spare officer would have been told to head into that area as part of a total "zero tolerance" campaign. Every violation would result in police attention, meaning that every untagged car would be towed, every observed moving violation or equipment violation would result in tickets and warrant checks on all occupants, all suspicious persons would be contacted and searched, and anyone who could be arrested for any violation would be hauled in. At the same time, the warrant squads would be hitting the houses of anyone known to have outstanding warrants in that area and the narcotics team would be closing up every dope house that they knew about. In short, life would become very unpleasant for the savages while the decent citizens would enjoy a few days with little or no crime.

We used to do that back in the day in instances where a group of residents would decide to harass or interfere with out officers during arrests or traffic stops. We'd hit that neighborhood hard for days on end and just rack up a hellacious number of arrests. Meanwhile, the drug dealers couldn't operate as we were scooping up their street sales boys and nailing their customers who tried to get into or out of the neighborhood. Oftentimes after a few days, the drug boys were known to administer summary punishment to a few of the offenders just to get us to back off. Oppressive? Damn straight. Unconstitutional? Don't care. What mattered was that these thugs learned to show respect for the police. They didn't have to like us, but they damned sure had to show enough respect to think twice about challenging us. And in instances where we had fools like those in Oakland running their mouths...well our sweeps might not have caught all of them up, but you can bet that we'd eventually snag their friends or relatives and their local dope connection, and often if we made life hard enough for the savages around them, someone would eventually make their life hard too.

It was largely because of that policy that we were able to run single-man cars long after the other area agencies doubled up, and why we had fewer chases and fights than neighboring departments. The bad guys knew that to go out of their way to mess with us was risking bringing a ton of heat down on the whole neighborhood in addition to the very real possibility of getting an ass-whipping. Our guys didn't play and our brass didn't expect them to. And if a criminal came in a bit banged up--or had to be arraigned on release from the hospital--so be it. Our officers were expected to win every time and complaints from lumped-up prisoners or their angry mammas were shrugged off. And the predictable result was that our officers got respect and grudging compliance from mutts that would have given crap to any other agency, and criminals often decided to do their thing in other areas because they didn't want their asses kicked. That type doesn't mind going to jail, but the possibility of a fat lip or a black eye on the way resonates with them like conscience or reason will not.

Alas, we're not allowed to do that any more. The unwritten but accepted policy of street justice, aka: "holding court in the alley" or "beat-and-release", was ended several years ago by a new "reform" chief that the higher-ups brought in from outside the department. It took a while for the mutts to catch on to the fact that they could now be as disrespectful to us as they were to other police agencies and everyone else in their little thug world, but they've figured it out now and we have the same problems that all of our neighboring agencies have--and as our brothers in Oakland are now having--where the thugs act as if they own the 'hood and taunting and harassing the police is not only condoned but encouraged. The police-hating, anti-American lawyer groups like the ACLU have done their best to handcuff us, and the tragic result is that now the honest citizens are that much less safe. Evil triumphs when good men aren't allowed to do anything, and it also triumphs in places like California where scumbags like Lovell Mixon are even granted parole.

Look west, people. Because as California is today, much of the rest of America may well be tomorrow. And if I can't stop it, I hope that I'm no longer around to see it happen.

Pursuits can be fun

Who am I kidding? They ARE fun. However most departments frown on them these days because oftentimes people get hurt. Now if it's just the jerkwater who decides to run, that's no big deal in my personal opinion. Call it a case of the Karma fairy settling accounts. But sometimes it's one of the good guys, and that's bad. And sometimes it's an innocent, totally uninvolved citizen. And that's unacceptable.

I remember my first pursuit like it was yesterday. I'd been on my own out of training for two days and a couple of hours when I saw a beat-up, tinted-out ex-police Caprice going down the road.

Now other than cab companies, only two kinds of people buy ex-police cars: Geeky, unpopular high school kids who are still a step above the Columbine trench Coat Mafia, and thugs.

The first group are mostly harmless. It's just goofy, antisocial little white boys who think that if they buy an ex-police car, someone might think for a moment that they're police officers instead of nerds and they hope that someone might actually respect or fear them. Usually they trick these cars up with as many lights and do-dads as they can to make them look even more like police cars, often to the point of actually getting in trouble for impersonating real police when they start using those lights in traffic, but usually they land a fat girlfriend who treats them like crap and they gladly ditch the toy cop car for her.

The second group is the dope boys and assorted hood rats who think that if they get a car that was once used to arrest many of the people that they know, it'll give them some sort of "street cred" and also allow them to flee from the real police, because everyone knows that an untrained fool driving an ex-police car that hasn't been maintained for crap can out-drive any seasoned police officer in a newer car that's actually been taken care of.

Well it was one of the second sort that I saw on this day, and sure enough, as soon as I went to stop the driver for the window-tint violation, he stomped on the gas and took off. I hit the lights and gunned it, all excited because I had my very own first pursuit. Go, me! And I called it in on the radio, just like I'd been taught, clarifying that it was a pursuit for traffic, giving a description of the vehicle, our direction of travel, and road and traffic conditions. I was doing everything right, just like I'd been taught to do for months in the academy. My fellow recent graduates were no doubt listening, green with envy. This was a great game.

Then a voice came over the radio. It was the shift Lieutenant, ordering Dispatch to tell me to break it off and quit chasing.

WTF?! I was right on this guy! I practically had him, other than the fact that he wasn't stopping. Dispatch relayed the command to me. "Break it off."

And here's where I almost ended my police career in it's opening days. I pulled a trick that I'd heard other officers do, both on TV and even in Field Training:

"Repeat that, Dispatch...you're breaking up." I pretended that I couldn't hear the order to stop. Just give me a few more seconds and I know that this guy'll stop and surrender to me, or something. He'll, that car's probably chock full of guns and drugs...

But it only lasted long enough for Dispatch to repeat the command, the tone making it clear that they weren't buying it.

I immediately wised up and complied, doing it "by the book" again. I turned my lights off, and I slowed to a stop, preparing to make a U-turn and leave the area so that I wouldn't even be accidentally going in the same direction of the Caprice that was now a two blocks away and disappearing fast. I gave it one more wistful glance. I'd almost had him...

Then I saw him hit the pedestrian--an old man who was just crossing the street three blocks down. The old man flew through the air like a rag doll, his bag of groceries scattering everywhere. SHIT!!!

"Dispatch! I stopped chasing but he just hit a pedestrian! Roll EMS! Get some people over here!" This wasn't a game anymore. Now somebody was really hurt--somebody who wasn't even playing. It wasn't supposed to work like this.

Fast-forward a lifetime as I pulled up and did what I could to render aid and keep the growing crowd back. I was deep in the 'hood--the only cop or white guy for a long ways--and everyone knew and liked this guy. Not good. Several of the crowd tried to rally the rest to attack me, but I was able to exert enough command presence to convince them that my goal was to help this guy and that they needed to help me by staying back. It bought me time until the cavalry got there.

Long story short, the guy was medivac'd out, and turned out to have relatively minor injuries, despite flipping clean over the car that had hit him. Apparently as drunk as he was, he was relaxed and he bent instead of breaking. He was angry about one thing, and that was the destruction of his recently-opened 40oz. malt liquor.

But then the perjury circus started. A million witnesses surged forth to swear on their last food stamps that I'd still been in full pursuit when the man was hit, and some even claimed that I'd hit him. It always amazed me how no one could be out on the street when something goes down, but if the police is involved, hundreds of them still see "everything"--even people who arrived ten or fifteen minutes later in cars or got off the city bus. And they all want to be witnesses against the police.

Fortunately my supervisors and the investigators knew what was going on, and they managed to find one honest person of the bunch who said that he'd seen me shut my lights and siren off and pull to the curb three blocks away, well before the fleeing Caprice had hit the man. This man's honesty might well have saved my job, an act which caused his wonderful neighbors to subsequently vandalize both his house and his car. I was found to be not responsible, even though I heard a few references to my "radio trouble" as part of the counseling session that followed. But the point was driven home to me that day that chases aren't kid games like you see on TV. They're serious safety hazards to anyone around, and each has the potential to hurt or kill someone who doesn't deserve it. I still chase, but always with that incident in mind. And now I break them off myself if the risks get too heavy.

But sometimes, chase endings are pre-ordained based simply on where you're chasing. There is a section of road in my area that ends in an on-ramp to the highway, and that ramp has a fairly steep descent that conceals from view a 15-mph, nearly 90-degree curve. Any vehicle hitting that curve as any kind of speed winds up on it's roof and/or in the woods. We chase three or four cars a year into that curve and the end result is as predictable as it is inevitable. Here's one that I chased into it a while back:
The driver was a early-twenties woman from a local "better-than-you" wealthy family who'd decided that she didn't want to get a third DWI. Well needless to say, she got it anyway and went to jail for 120 days once the judge heard my testimony and saw the pictures. Sometimes there is a happy ending.

Oh--and the best part about pursuits that end in that curve? The bottom of that ramp is the state highway patrol's jurisdiction. They get to handle the crash reports and clean-up!

It's a car--it's a plane--it's a SUBMARINE!

It started out as a quiet summer night a few years back.

I was just driving along, minding my own business, when a small late-model car with two teen girls passed me going the opposite direction. They weren't speeding or anything, but the driver clearly had that panicky "oh shit, it's a cop!" look on her face. That look on the face of a driver, passenger or pedestrian is usually a red flag and a good reason for closer investigation, so I braked and U-turned on that car just to follow it for a bit.

Immediately that white car became a rocket and took off.

Oh, yeah. Here we go. I hit the overhead lights and called out with a pursuit in progress. It was about 11PM or so on a dark, deserted rural road with no traffic and nowhere for this car to go. Or so I thought, anyway. The driver of the car immediately made a sharp left turn onto a narrow dirt road that led into one of our parks.

I let dispatch know that the pursuit had now turned into this park, and that the chase was about to terminate as this road was less than a mile long. I knew that it came to a dead end in a small parking area for the boat launch that was there. I guess I naively assumed that these girls knew it too as I expected them to start slowing down any time.

But they kept their speed up, reaching highway speeds on this narrow dead-end dirt road.

"They gotta know this is a dead end," I kept telling myself.

But apparently they did not. And before I could even say "WTF?!", they shot into and across the parking area, hit some logs meant as a barrier to stop cars from rolling past the parking lot boundary, and went airborne for a brief moment before impacting with a huge splash into the water beyond.

They almost cleared the whole dock, but they wound up taking that out, too.

"10-50 into the water! Roll Rescue and start a Hook," I told Dispatch.

But as it turned out, the girls weren't injured. Both clambered out of the car and waded ashore. And just my luck--they're 17. Juveniles. I really, really hate dealing with juveniles just because of all of the extra hoops that our department makes us jump through.

As it turns out, this all started because they had a beer in the car between them. One beer. And when they saw me, they panicked. Of course being teen girls, when I asked where they got the beer, they lied and claimed that they just found it sitting alongside the road.

"OK, so you're in the habit of stopping to pick up any bottle on the ground that looks like it might have beer in it and drinking it, is that right?"


"Uh-huh," they both said with straight faces.

So I asked for their ID and parents' contact info.

"Do you really have to call my mom?" the one asks.

"Gee, do you think?"

So rescue came and checked them out and pronounced them fine but wet. I then administered a PBT (Portable Breath Test) to both, because, being under 21, any alcohol in their system is illegal and the PBT is sufficient for a citation. Both had positive scores so each got an "Underage Consumption of Alcohol" citation.

Then the real fun. The moms showed up. No fathers--just two very angry mothers.

And predictably, they were not angry at the girls, but at each other, and, of course, at me.
Each mom blamed the other girl for getting her daughter into this mess. Then it got positively comical when they learned that the car--owned by om A--had been driven into the water by the daughter of Mom B. So after Mom A jumps on me for chasing darling daughter into the water, she demands to know who is going to have to pay for the damage to her car.

"That's between you and your insurance company," I tell her. "And you can also expect a hefty bill for that dock."

"But my daughter wasn't driving!"

"Apparently not," I explained. "But you entrusted your car to your daughter. Your daughter entrusted it to this girl. And when I called your insurance company, they told me that neither of them are covered drivers on your insurance policy. This is probably going to go against you since it was your car and you'll have to sue this other girl through her mother to recover the amounts that you're going to wind up being held liable for."

This of course started a screaming match between the mothers that looked like it was about to go Pro Wrestling. Since it wasn't taking place in front of my cruiser's video camera, I moved in to break it up before the fists flew and the hair extensions came out.

I quickly got everyone documented and sent them home, and then hung out to write my report in peace while waiting for the tow-truck to show up and yank the car out. And it's lucky for me that I got rid of Mom A before the hook showed up, because that chimp that the tow company sent out probably did more damage to the car by carelessly yanking it out (and dropping it back in at least three times due to bad hook-ups) than the Dukes of Hazzard stunt that dunked it in the first place.

This damned case wound up bouncing back and forth in the juvenile courts and civil courts for at least three years and I can't even recall how many times I was subpoenaed or deposed as the park, the insurance company and the two moms battled back and forth over the bill and tried to mitigate the fault by fighting the Underage Consumption charges, but it was a lot. (Overtime = Ka-Ching!)

Moral of the story: If you have a spoiled brat daughter, don't let her and her girlfriend borrow your year-old car without at least making sure that they're both covered drivers.

Funny thing about warrants...they last

Diana Arrington just learned that lesson the hard way.

It appears that Diana was stopped for a traffic offense and arrested for DUI in Anchorage, Alaska back in September of 1995. because authorities didn't know that she had two prior DUI convictions in Georgia--making this one a felony--she was allowed to bond out on a promise to appear. However she immediately jumped bail and fled to Florida, where she then tried to have a lawyer get the case dismissed in her absence. When that failed, she simply gave the court the bird and refused to appear.

However, for some reason, she decided to return to Alaska twelve years later, and when she was stopped for another traffic violation, that vintage warrant was waiting for her, along with a new felony Failure To Appear charge.

And evidence usually sticks around, too, so it was nothing for the prosecutor--who was still in college back when Arrington was first arrested--to convince a jury to convict her.

Her sentencing is in May. Hopefully they don't let her leave again. Come, on, jail time!

Now this reminds me of a guy that I dealt with several years ago. I was working a traffic closure post for a big local event. This entailed my sitting at a barricade at an intersection where traffic had been blocked, just to keep people from going around it.

And yes, I was making overtime money for this.

So I'm sitting there, minding my own business, when I see a couple walk away from the event. Right in front of me, the male turns, steps into a patch of trees, and proceeds to take a leak. Now since I'm sitting right there in a marked police car, I have to wonder what this guy's thinking, especially since there were plenty of porta-potties back where he'd just come from. So I get out of my car and walk over as he's finishing up, and he's got a case of attitude from the get-go. I explain that what he's done is illegal, and he tells me that it's ridiculous because the porta-potties are nasty and have long lines and that since nobody saw him, it's not a big deal.

Well anyone else could have come along and seen him in this very public location, so yeah, it is a big deal. This again was one that could have just been handled with a warning but the guy was obviously trying to show his woman there that he was the Alpha Dog so instead of saying "gee, you're right...I'm really sorry and won't do it again," he argued with me about it. So I wrote him the ticket for Urinating in Public and told him to show up on the mandatory court date or else a warrant for his arrest would be issued. I figure if he's going to be an ass about it, he can take a day off work and come down to stand before the judge in open court and explain why he was peeing in public in broad daylight. No big deal.

Time went by, and I'd forgotten all about it until I got a subpoena for this case almost a year later. Here I'd figured that he'd shown up in court, paid whatever fine, and had the case dealt with short of a trial, but apparently he'd decided not to appear at all and a warrant had been issued. That warrant sat there, quietly waiting until...

Fast-forward ten months. As it was relayed to me, this guy was at the airport picking up his fiancee's parents--parents that he was meeting for the first time--when he was involved in a minor collision with an airport shuttle bus. (I can sympathize with him here...those shuttle bus drivers all suck.) Responding Airport Police show up to take the report, run the dirvers' liceses as a matter of course, and...

"Sir, you're under arrest."

"For what?"

"Well apparently there's a warrant for your arrest for urinating in public..."

Right in front of the prospective in-laws. So much for first impressions.

He wound up being taken to jail and booked on the UIP charge and he had to post a bond, which I understand he had to borrow from his soon-to-be dad-in-law.

Fine for Urinating in Public: $125.00
Getting arrested for peeing in public right in front of your fiancee's parents on that special night: Priceless.

It never pays to ignore things like court appearances. Arrest warrants don't get old and you never know when they're going to just out at you and yell "Surprise!"

Writing tickets on doctors and nurses

Now I know that this is going to be a controversial subject, between those brothers and sisters of mine out there who don't believe in ticketing medical professionals and the civilians who think that any exercise of police discretion in issuing tickets (unless they're the one who got stopped) is wrong, I expect some flack back from both ends of the spectrum. But I think I can handle that, especially since I've heard more than enough about it from some of the so-called "professionals" in the medical field.

Here are a few of my stories, which go a long way to show why I now no longer subscribe to the idea that doctors and nurses all automatically have breaks coming.

Case #1. One nice morning, I was out standing alongside the road, minding my own business and shooting laser in an area designated for special attention due to problems with speeders. I happened to tag this Jaguar coming on at 27 mph over the limit. I stepped out into traffic and was just able to flag him over into the turn-out area that I was using for the stops. I walked up, introduced myself, and told him why I'd stopped him.

"Yeah, ok, that's fine. But I'm a doctor and I'm late", he says. His tone made it apparent that he was expecting me to just let him go without any further questions.
"Is there some sort of medical emergency that you're being called in for, sir?"
"No. It's just that I have to get there to make my rounds and check on my patients."

Ah, ok. No medical emergency. Just a guy late for work. but he said it with that sharp tone that indicated that I was annoying him by asking and detaining him, and that annoys me. So I figure that I'll give him a break, but only after he gets a bit of a lesson on basic roadside manner. We're not in your hospital now, doc. This is my road and now we're in my office, such as it is.
I ask him to produce his license and registration.

"I just told you that I'm late," he replied. "I need to get to the hospital." Again with that tone that suggested that he's the boss here.

"Sir, are there other doctors at that hospital?"

"Huh? why of course there are. It's "XXX Hospital! Just down the road.

"OK," I told him. "So then there are other doctors who can handle any emergency that might come up while we're taking care of this basic traffic matter. I just wanted to make sure."


He clenched his teeth but didn't say anything back, choosing to turn away from me and just stare out across his hood as if I was no longer even there. In other words, I was dismissed.

OK, we can play this game. I went back to my cruiser and sat down and began to write him out a warning violation. It wasn't going to be a ticket--I was still going to give him a warning, and hopefully he'd get the message from my simply detaining him a few minutes to write one out in lieu of a ticket.

However, about a minute or two into it, I heard a horn blow. I looked up and he was holding his arm with his watch on it out his window, and reaching out with his other hand to point at his watch. Oh, no...

So I reached out my window and held up my ticket book, and then I pointed to it the same way that he was pointing to his watch. Check, Jackass. Then I pulled my warning notice off the clip board and began to write him a moving violation.

When I went up and handed him back his license and the $275.00 ticket, he snatched it from me and said "You must be a rookie. When you get good at this you'll learn not to ticket people who might have to save your life!" So saying, he sped off.

I Googled him later. He's a podiatrist. A foot doctor who probably couldn't find the Emergency Department with a map and a Sherpa guide. Yeah, he just might save me...if I ever get a bad case of Athelete's Foot.

Case #2. Different location on another morning. I'm set up to catch people who like to use an inappropriate lane or run up on the shoulder to pass slow traffic at a particularly congested spot during morning rush hour. Previous road rage incidents here beginning with that sort of thing have caused the powers that be to assign me this particular plum assignment.

And here comes a little car racing right up on the shoulder, passing a half mile of barely moving cars which are all creeping along in the proper lane. Oh, it's my lucky day--it's a Porsche. Obviously the representative of the "Better-than-you" crowd has arrived.

I stop this one, and it's an older blonde woman. before I can even say word one, she cuts my introduction off: "Yeah, yeah, I know...I'm technically not supposed to do that, but I'm a doctor at XXX Hospital and I'm late for work."

"You're right, Ma'am," I reply. "You're not supposed to do that. And there's no 'technically' about it. May I see your license and registration please?"

She sighs and rolls her eyes and digs into her purse for her documents. "I just told you that I'm a doctor..." she says. Then she hands me her license and her hospital ID card. I hand her the hospital card back, and she says "I just wanted you to see that so you'll know that I'm a doctor."

"OK, I get that," I respond. "Just wait here." I began walking back to my cruiser.

Now normally I don't cut anyone breaks on this particular violation because I myself have sat in long lines only to watch people breeze past on the shoulder, but she cinched the ticket when she yelled back "Well you don't have to take that tone with me! You could show a little more respect!"
Respect for what? A prima-dona who thinks that her job entitles her to pass us all of these other people who are now inching past us in the proper traffic lanes? Screw thast. She can have the ticket just like any other driver would get from me for this.

And of course she wasn't done with her commentary. When I walked back up with her ticket, she snatched it from me, made it a point to read my name tag, and said nastily: "Well thank you Officer XXXX! You'd just better hope and pray that you never wind up on my table in the E/R!"

This caused me to ask her if she would prefer to discuss this matter--and her threat--further in her hospital administrator's office. Not surprisingly, that didn't seem to appeal to her and she drove off. I went out of my way to stop red Porsches for a while after that. I didn't catch her again, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't trying.

Case #3. Pulled over a serious speeder one night, and as I walk up to the car, the driver takes a stethoscope off of her mirror and holds it up to me, saying "It's ok...I'm a nurse!"

I explained the reason for my stopping her--a speed well in excess of the posted limit--and she just grinned and said "Yeah, I know. I get stopped here a lot when I'm running late. But you guys aren't supposed to ticket us."

So here she is, admitting that she speeds on purpose with the expectation that there will be no consequence just because she is a nurse at some hospital. (And as it turned out, she--like the doctor in case #1--worked in some specialty field and had nothing to do with the Emergency Department.) So she got her ticket, and a mandatory court date due to her high speed. When I explained that she would have to appear in court in two weeks, she threw the ticket on her floor and exclaimed: "God, you're an asshole, aren't you!"

These three cases are my reasons for not automatically giving people a pass just because they hold a certain job. (Fellow cops notwithstanding, of course.) In each case, the people who were obviously expecting and used to getting "professional courtesy" were totally unwilling to show any sort of courtesy to me. In their eyes, they were important enough to warrant treatment above and beyond that of ordinary people, and apparently too important to even show me any of the courtesy and respect that they felt entitles to. But courtesy is a two-way street, and because of those three, while I may extend a break to individual medical care providers based on the circumstances and merits of that particular encounter, it's by no means automatic or a given.

Stopping the special people

In my work area, it's a fact of life that you will eventually stop someone famous or powerful for a traffic infraction. Some will be very nice, while others will be total tools. As an example of the former, I will always remember stopping Tony Nicely, CEO and President of GEICO Insurance.

It was a little before 11PM if I recall, and I was just pulling out of my station's driveway in a marked cruiser when this car shot by like a rocket, well in excess of the limit.

"Oh no he didn't..." I think to myself. I mean, my boss is still in his office. How are you going to fly past our building with my boss possibly looking out his window and me sitting right there in the driveway? I punched the gas and threw gravel as I fish-tailed onto highway after him. I quickly caught up with the car--a high-end sedan--and it was still zipping along. I got a quick pace on the vehicle at 23mph over the limit, then hit my radar and confirmed it. I was going to have this guy for sure. I hit the lights and pulled him over on the side of the road. "Dispatch, hold me out northbound with traffic, vanity tag "GEICO 1".

When I got the return--car registered to GEICO Insurance--I had to smile at the irony. I exited my vehicle and approached the driver.

The driver was a distinguished-looking older gentleman in formal attire, and he had a woman next to him who was also dressed up for a party. I was already thinking that I might get the night's first DUI right here. People who go to parties usually drink. So I started out by introducing myself and telling the man why I'd stopped him. He was immediately apologetic and deferential, and quickly handed me his license. He could not, however, find the car's paperwork, and he apologized for that. He also said that he and his wife had been talking about the dinner they'd just left and he hadn't been paying attention to his speed. He also hadn't seen me sitting there as he passed. As we spoke, I checked his eyes and saw none of the tell-tale signs of alcohol, and I didn't smell any, either. So since he mentioned a dinner, I pressed for a bit more information, just to keep him talking and to check his general attitude. "Where was this dinner at, Sir?"
He told me that the dinner was at a local hotel and that his company had hosted it for the family members of their employees who'd been called up for military service.

Well damn. That, if true, was just nice. I'm nothing if not supportive of our troops myself, and how many companies would do something like that for their employees? And I believed him. Generally most of us know when someone's lying to us by the way that they act, and this fellow seemed sincere. Plus, that story wasn't the sort that people just make up out of thin air when asked. And then his wife even held up a program and asked me if I wanted to see it.

Aw, hell... now I'm not so inclined to even write the speeding ticket.

"Not a problem as far as the registration goes," I told him. "I already know that it's good. As for your insurance...well I'm going to guess that you either work for GEICO or you really like their policies."

He smiled, and told me that he was, in fact, the CEO of the company.

"Wow," I replied. "A speeding ticket for 23 over would sure blow a big hole in that safe driver discount program that your company offers, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," he replied, smiling resignedly. "I'm sure that it's going to."

And that clinched it for me. He didn't even ask me to cut him a break like most people do.

I handed him his license back and told him to pay a little more attention to his speed and his surroundings. I then shined my light quickly around the inside of his car. "You don't have that little lizard in here, do you?"

They both laughed, and he told me that it was a gecko, not a lizard, but that tonight was the gecko's night off. Then he thanked me and wished me a nice night as he drove off.

"Now that guy has class," I thought as I walked back to my cruiser. So many of those folks get so hung up on telling me who they are and how important they are--often followed by dropping names of other people that they think might keep me from writing them a ticket, but this guy didn't try any of that. He was honest and respectful, acknowledged his error, and appeared ready to accept the ticket without any argument whatsoever. Those people are rare and they seldom get tickets from me, even if they aren't the CEO of a big insurance company.