(quoted from post at 18:05:07 03/26/14) What is with these stupid cops. 1. A farmer gets a DUI for driving his tractor. 2. 83 year old woman gets seat belt ticket driving 2 blocks to the store. 3. Guy gets arrested for hitting a dog that ran out in front of him. 4. Another guy gets DUI in a golf cart. 5. A guy gets an open container for being a passenger (driver not get a ticket at all). 6. Cop calls fire department out for a grass fire on private property that was not out of control. 7. Man gets ticket for no flags when moving a building. If you can't see the building, how the H=1L are you gonna see the flags?? Why dont they leave the good ol people alone and go after the real problems, like the meth house everyone knows about, the guy thats stealing and they know who it is, and just plain go after the real problems and let this little crap go. They just causing alot of good ol folks alot of grief and misery.
I was a State Trooper for well over 20 years, lets see just how stupid this stuff really is-
1- If the farmer was on the road operating his tractor while drunk then he IS DWI. He can kill someone just as easily with a tractor as a car.
2- Does the law apply to everyone except 83 year old women? I'm not big on these types of tickets, but the law applies to all of us. And yes, I wear my seat belt, always have. I lost my father and sister because of no seat belts.
3- What was the guy hitting the dog arrested for? Suspended license? Outstanding warrant? Speeding? Without the facts you have nothing but an agenda driven anecdote.
4- Golf cart, lawn mower, ATV, snowmobile, Gator...whats the difference? A drunk is a drunk and they don't belong on the road. See #1.
5- If the law says no open containers, as it does in my state, then he's in the wrong. Why would the driver get the ticket if he didn't have an OC?
6- If there was a burn ban in effect or other ordinance outlawing the fire, then why was the cop wrong? I hate burn bans because it cramps my style. I don't complain about people getting caught breaking the law though.
7- Really? An oversize load that requires permits, probably escort cars and maybe the power company and a police escort and you don't see why flags are required? The reason the flags and permits and escorts and everything else is required is because at some point some moron DID hit the building or whatever else was being moved. People don't always have infallible judgment, as you post proves.
Look in your local newspaper or better yet go spend a few days in your local courts and see just how many serious crimes are being prosecuted. It's staggering. True, we all know where the problems are and we'd all like the druggies and wife beaters and thieves and other trash behind bars. But there's a thing called the law that says you have to do it right to get them. You need proof, you need to have witnesses and people willing to go down on paper and testify. You also have to satisfy the bean counters that just have to know how many hours you spent looking for seat belts, and cell phones and speeders and drunks and watched school zone and checked posted properties and patrolled high risk areas and worked on community relations and how much time you spent on 50 other areas that Joe Average never even knows they are required to spend time doing. And you better have the mounds of paperwork in on time and the car spotless and the oil and tires changed and all your documents into the court on time and you'd better be getting all the essential bean counter paperwork to HQ no later than 9AM and you'd better be doing all your interviews on that case you had the other day, even though now you're on 2 weeks of midnights when all the people you need to interview are asleep.
IOW, you have no clue. A lot of what I read about or hear about makes no sense to me either, right up until I actually talk to one of the involved officers and find out the news got it all wrong or the guy telling the story is so full of bovine excrement that his eyes turned brown. In a perfect world we wouldn't need police. But people are just people and they won't do things even close to right if someone isn't watching. We have laws to keep anarchy at bay, simple as that.
