I’ve been wanting to blog about this for some time now, but it’s never wise to draw attention to a pending case.
(I’ve changed the names of the other two drivers.)
A few months ago, I was traveling northbound on a street headed for home. I reached the 4-way red flasher at the intersection between that street and the street I lived on. The other driver was traveling southbound on and was at the flasher.
I signaled my right-hand turn and proceeded to make the turn when the other driver, Mr. Beavis, sped up to try to get out ahead of me, and by the time I looked back and realized what was going on, the two cars hit each other at approximately a 45 degree angle, damaging the plastic bumper cover on the left side of my car, and a hubcap and part of the other driver’s right fender.
Mr. Beavis got out of his car, and I exited my car, and he asked me whether we should “trade insurance” or “call the police”, and I said I would rather call the police, so I did, and it took them approximately half an hour to arrive on the scene. By this time, I and Mr. Beavis had agreed to move our cars out of the way into a nearby parking lot.
While waiting on the police to arrive, it seemed to me that nobody was hurt, but Fire and Rescue showed up, and I was baffled, so I told them that I didn’t think anyone was hurt.
This was around the time that the passenger, Mr. Butthead, alleged a back injury, so FR came back and eventually carted him off to the hospital and took down my insurance information.
Meanwhile, the police finally arrived and separated us for questioning, and then decided to inappropriately cite me for making a perfectly legal right-hand turn, and completely ignored the fact that Mr. Beavis didn’t actually have a driver’s license or an insurance card on his person while in operation of his vehicle, as I believe Illinois law requires.
It stunned me that they could write a citation when they admit that they didn’t see anything that had happened, and that their own report shows that I had the right of way. Further, their report just flat-out lied and claimed that I admitted fault on the scene when I said “This was not my fault. I made a perfectly legal turn and then they sped up and hit me.”.
Well, I demanded a bench trial, and I got one today, and Beavis and Butthead never showed up in court, and the judge threw out the ticket.
So, why did the police department lie about me in order to trump up a traffic ticket? Well, in a word, money.
In more words, they took a look at me, took a look at the two dumbasses in the other car, and realized I would be more inclined to pay up. How do you pressure two people who already had no license or insurance to pay a traffic ticket? Especially in Illinois, which just made it illegal for the DMV to withhold a driver’s license from someone for refusal to pay a fine?
Especially when Beavis and Butthead carried themselves like a couple of drug dealers or other sort of small time criminals who likely made money illegally, in a way that would be impossible for a collection agency to seize if the state did use one.
Nobody here trusts the police, and I can kind of see why. They let some lawbreakers go, and I know they’re a couple of criminals because I actually pulled their criminal records. The one going “Owww, my back!” (Mr. Butthead) just got out of prison up in Wisconsin for bail jumping and child abuse, and he participated in a prison riot while he was in there, and the driver, Mr. Beavis, had a string of misdemeanors.
Lucky for me they treated court for me like they do court for themselves. In every single case against either of them, they’d fail to appear and have a warrant issued.
This decision by the police department to lie to make a case against me was a pretty simple attempt at extortion. They know full well that it’s a numbers game.
Most people will see a $164 ticket and, right or wrong, not have the time to go to court and fight it, so they just pay. Then the police department has more money to buy assault rifles, rocket launchers, tanks, and license plate readers. The politicians love it because they “didn’t raise taxes” to get them all that crap.
If you go to court and fight, you may even have some court costs added to the fine.
But if you don’t fight, you’re screwing yourself long haul, because your insurance company will just use it as an excuse to raise your insurance premiums. The truth is, like the police, they don’t much care whether you did it or not. The fact is, now they can all gang up on you and use another factor to offer you a worse deal on something you have to buy.
So always contest it. Even if you can’t afford a lawyer (I paid one in case things got hairy in there, but they didn’t.), contest, contest, contest. The truth is that you may just get lucky and the “complaining witnesses” can’t be produced by the state, or maybe the cop that wrote you the ticket is on a ventilator with COVID or something. I mean, literally anything can come up.
Worst case, if everyone shows up and you think you’ll lose, you can still make a deal for a deferral (Illinois calls it supervision) with the prosecutor, and at least spare your driving record.
Also worth noting, in case anyone felt I was being unfair to the cops, Illinois has passed a law banning ticket quotas, lying to minors who are suspects in criminal cases, using broken headlamps as an excuse to toss your car, chokeholds, and all sorts of other things, but in reality it goes on all the time because there’s so seldom a punishment for corrupt cops.
I’ve never felt especially safe near a police officer, because copaganda aside, they’re not there to help you. They will, however, reach into your pockets and steal from you. Or try to….
I treat dealing with the police like I have a grenade in my back pocket waiting to go off, because of something they didn’t mention. I don’t ever make statements to them if I can avoid it. If a crime happens, I pretend I didn’t see it because I don’t want to talk to them when they arrive.
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