Me and the Law

Unlike my early twenties, I rarely if ever run afoul of the law these days.  Those rebellious days of calling police officers "pigs" and other nasty monikers has gone the way of the Dodo for me.  In other words, I am quite at peace with our peace officers, and understand that they're just human beings doing their jobs.  I've also decided to restrict my judgments of them on a case by case basis.  Well, at the risk of pissing off a bunch of people whose basic uniform includes a gun and handcuffs, it's time for me to call out the local Sheriff.  And I do mean the local Sheriff. No, I don't live in the old west where a high noon gun draw might serve to settle the score I'm referring to, but I do live in an idyllic seaside setting where our local law enforcement is the county sheriff's department.

 Well here's my story, I'm driving along our coastal roadway, just minding my own business, enjoying the sight of the glorious ocean on a picture perfect day, when all of a sudden I see the Sheriff vehicle behind me.  Now ordinarily, I wouldn't have thought twice about it, but I had just gone through a construction zone where a fellow was holding up a "slow" sign, and I wasn't sure if I was "slow" enough for the Sheriff's taste.  And while slow can't be exactly quantified, you never know how law enforcement will respond with the state and county needing to rustle up revenue in these cash strapped/over budgeted times.  So I started to get a bit on the nervous side.  Well sure enough, within moments those lovely red and blue rollers started blaring out into my rearview mirror, and I immediately pulled over to the side of the road.  Now even though I didn't have any contraband on me, and my registration and insurance was all in order, I had a mild flashback to my several run ins with the the traffic law in my early youth.  So here comes this Sheriff moseying up to the vehicle, and the guy can't be any more than 24 years old.  He's not very intimidating with his glasses and peach fuzz mustache.  In fact he looks more like a computer nerd that would have some bully kicking sand in his face (This may actually provide the key to why he became a cop in the first place.) Now I'm thinking this must be this guy's first "big bust", and I relax just a bit with the now apparent humour beginning to creep into my consciousness.  So I say, "What seems to be the problem, officer?", which is probably a better choice than "I smell bacon." when these people approach the vehicle.  So he says "Well your registration is expired."  Now I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I in fact I've paid my registration for the current year, and now that the potential speeding thing is a non-issue so I figure I'm home free.  So now this guy is doing his best Dragnet impersonation trying to be real intimidating and asks me a question that I've never, ever been asked by a traffic cop before, and that is "Have you ever been arrested before?"  I mean what the fuck? What is that his business? I mean how dangerous does a white guy driving a Toyota really look that he's got to give me the once over.  And if he is in fact just pulling me over for expired tags, where is the due cause in the Guantanomo treatment? I'm surprised he didn't jump straight to cavity search.  So of course I do what any rational American would do at that point, I lied.  I said no.  Actually first I told him I had been pulled over a long time ago for a stop sign infraction, but there was no way I was going into my sordid past which included colorful stories including the "Housesitting for Friend's Pot Plants for Thanksgiving" that ended with me in a West L.A. jail cell sharing a bunk with a guy named Peanut who was in there for having a sawed off shotgun, or possibly even the time I got brought down to police HQ when I was 15 because I mouthed off to a one of Chicago's finest after some uptight old man accused me of having "Murder in my eyes" when he called the cops because my little white dog was off the leash and he didn't like it.  No, I was not going to go into detail on these hilarious in retrospect anecdotes to my new found officer friendly.  So he says, "You were arrested for the Stop sign infraction?", and then I did my best laugh it off like how dumb is that that I don't know the difference between being pulled over, and arrested.  I mean I act whiter than  whole milk, and say "Oh no, not arrested.  Just pulled over. I've never been arrested."  Well I figure after 10 years it all comes off your record so I decide to go with that as my final answer, and he heads back to the squad car for what had to be at least 25 minutes. No, I'm not exaggerating.  

Luckily, as I mentioned earlier, it was a beautiful day so it was actually kind of pleasureful other than the fact I was late for my haircut, but I called so no problem there.  And my realtor even called to tell me that my wife and I had our offer on a house accepted, so I figured it would be part of a funny story I would tell later like I'm doing now.  And I really tried to keep it all in perspective knowing full well that I was totally in the clear.  And sure enough after our Policeman in question ran my record he discovered I was in fact innocent.  So he comes back to the car, and I told him it must've been someone who stole the sticker so they wouldn't have to pay for the registration.  Well he and his partner looked at me like I'm crazy, and suggested it was dust buildup that had stripped it off of the pile of other stickers since 2000 that it was on top of.  So I figure that would be it, we'd all have a laugh about how this was the most innocuous pull over in the history of policedom, and they'd tell me to go get another sticker, and that would be it.  Well, little officer poindexter really had to do things by the books this time, so he's got a full on infraction fixit ticket for me to sign.  Now I was a bit perturbed, but when I asked if there was a fine, he said no, I just needed to get the replacement sticker, and then have it signed off on at the Sheriff's station and then send it into the court.  That would be easy enough, and I made some good natured comment about how if you had to get pulled over, this would be the best place to do it, and they kind of mustered a smile about it, but uptight is afterall part of the job description, so there wasn't a lot of cheerfulness about this duo.  I guess when you've got handguns on you at all times, it would probably make you pretty uptight.  I then thanked them for alerting me to this fact, and drove off, even thinking this was possibly a good thing, as the DMV hadn't sent me my notice of renewal that was due in less than a month.

So now I'm feeling pretty good about the whole thing and my whole life to where even a police encounter has turned into a beautiful thing, and I'm ready to wrap up the whole thing in a sweet little story and moral lesson of how even the worst things can be made yummy, but that's when the story changed.  You see I did my part, and even called the DMV, and found out I never got them the address change which is why I didn't receive the renewal, and I found out I needed to do a Smog check on my car which I promptly did, and headed down to the AAA office to get my renewal, which I joined for $20 so I didn't have to wait 2 hours at the DMV, and I could take care of this issue pronto.  You see, I'm a model citizen, and I am on top of this social responsibility thing.  And then I even tried to get to the Sheriff's station that same day, but it had already closed. 

The very next day, I head back to the Sheriff station, and I walk in to get these new tags signed off, and what do I see?  Oh, just a sign that says $15 is due for a signoff of a citation of any kind.  Now I'm incensed.  So someone stole my tags, and I have to pay for the Sheriff to sign a frickin' signature.  So I complain to the clerk, and she's typically uncompassionate, noting that it's the time I'm paying for.  So let me understand this, they charge $15 for 30 seconds of their time.  Fuck, this is the highest paid government worker I have ever met.  Makes more than some CEOs.  That's $30 a minute, and $1800 an hour.  And $72,000 for a 40 hour work week.  No wonder our fucking taxes are so high.  Then I ask her if I have to pay a fee to send this in to the court.  Well naïve Jeremy is really at it folks, because of course there's a fee.  Turns out it's $25 to send this thing in.  Boy, Scharzanegger better be able to balance the budget with all this extra income from citizens who are having crimes committed on them.  In fact, I'm starting to suspect that the police are actually removing tags from cars just so they can make some extra money for the county and state gov.  So the moral of the story is does your local government serve you when they not only pull you over for something that's not your fault, then waste your time figuring it out, and when they could easily save you time by giving you a warning, and sending you to deal with it, they decide to write up a citation which then costs you $50.  Doesn't sound like justice to me?  Sounds like greed.  And you know what animal greed is associated with.  Now I'm not saying that these cops are really the greedy ones, it's the politicians, and government workers getting paid $72,000 a week for signing citations.

 Now I went to a book signing once where Gene Wilder was signing copies of his book, and I can almost guarantee you that Gene did not make a fraction of what that Sheriff office worker made for signing off on that citation.  And I don't know about you, but I think Gene Wilder deserves the money a fuck of a lot more than some bureaucrat sitting behind some bullet proof glass. So in summation, I guess it would save me time and money if I just ripped off some other unsuspecting sucker's registration tags.  That way I avoid the law and the fees.  Sounds like justice to me.  What it sounds more like actually is trading good old fashioned sanity for some money that some politician is gonna piss away anyway.  If you ask me I value sanity a hell of a lot more than some paper that's just gonna disappear anyway when you hand it to the shrink to help you get your head straight.  So here's to no more run ins with the law.  I salute the minions of the law in general, but when they lose their humanity in exchange for petty  bureaucracy.