A few weeks ago, I was pulled over and told that my tags had expired, which was a surprise to me. The officer said, "You know, I'm supposed to impound your car...but I'm not going to." So, let me digress a little here and say that it's the little touches that make normal law-abiding folks hate cops. I understand that police officers have very stressful jobs. They deal with the scum of the earth on a daily basis. However, police officers need to differentiate between treating potential scum like scum and treating everybody like scum. If you pull somebody over for driving with their running lights on instead of their full headlights in the middle of a well-lit city, and the offender is genuinely surprised, not drunk, and has no prior offenses - perhaps it is best not to threaten to make them go to driving school.
Also, don't threaten to impound somebody's car when you have no friggin' intention of doing so. Did that make you feel better? Will that threat make it more likely that I will get my tags? Probably not more likely than the fact that you already issued me tickets that require me to go to traffic court. I think that the possibility of a large fine and or other penalty is motivation enough to register my car and pay my personal property taxes on my car. But nooooooo, you had to take it an extra step, just so I could thank you for being a dick. "Thank you, officer. I appreciate that," I replied.
"I hope you fall off your bike and get some road-rash on your fat-parts" I thought inside my head.
I'm not saying all cops are bad. It's just the bad ones that give the rest a bad rep.
So, traffic court was pretty straightforward. I went in and registered early. At the beginning of the session, the bailiff explained that the court would be trying cases not in alphabetical order (which really sucks for trinny, as her real name resides at the end of the alphabet, curses!) but in the order in which we registered. Joy, I thought - I registered 2nd, so I'll be out of here in a jif!
Then they began looking at cases alphabetically. Then they stopped to have the newly released jailbirds come in to get officially released on probation. One of the things that jails provide people with upon rejoining the cruel world is a roll of toilet paper - I saw several former inmates holding these in large plastic zip-loc bags. Then they stopped to try any cases where the defendant was being represented by a lawyer. Then the juvenile cases. Then more jail releases.
I wasn't all bad. I felt a lot better about my situation after watching some of the youth offenders go through their whole rigamarole. It's really difficult to sign up for anger management courses, submit a clean drug test, and prove that you are enrolled in school, according to a lot of these kids. It's also difficult to come to court, where you are being judged, in clean, conservative clothing. Tight jeans, baggy jeans, cut-off jeans, garish shirts. They were all there. It wasn't a surprise, really. During the opening spiel, the bailiff informed the court that we needed to spit out any gum before addressing the judge, and I thought "oh, this should be good." Any time you have to inform a group of adults to spit out their gum at a public court hearing - you know you have special people involved.
In the end I pleaded no contest, paid my expired tag fine, and moved on with my life. Now I'm always going to make time to register my car and renew my tags on time.
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