“Of the Month” is meaningful here, because yesterday evening my wife got a ticket yesterday for talking on her cell phone.
Except that her cell phone was home at the time.
She told the police officer that she didn’t have a cell phone, and he told her she was lying, everybody has a cell phone.
She offered to let him search her pocketbook and car for a cell phone, and he refused.
Every police department in the nation denies that their traffic cops have monthly ticket quotas.
Yesterday was May 31.
By the way, it turns out that cell phone companies won’t give you access to records confirming that no calls were made or received on a phone on a given day. Seems “you own your phone, but we own your records,” and those records are only released if you hire a lawyer to issue a subpoena, or if the traffic cop requests it: the first option being highly impractical, and the second — especially in this case– highly unlikely.
My wife is likely to win this one: after taking time off from work and paying court costs, which most traffic courts charge you win-or-lose. And the cop? He filled his quota, and will suffer no consequences.
© 2012 by Bill Bickel unless otherwise noted.
I’m going to have to be a wet blanket here. I’m not sure you’ll be able to “prove” she wasn’t taking on a cell phone, even with her records. After all, she could have been talking on a different phone that you aren’t presenting in court. That said, it’s still a “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard, even in traffic court. So you do have a chance to prevail. But it will be a “he said, she said” weighing of credibility type of thing.
BTW, here in the Southwest I’ve never seen a traffic court or any criminal court for that matter that makes the winner pay costs.
Here in the Chicago area, if you contest a citation but the case is dismissed (usually because the policeman or whoever you had the accident with doesn’t show) you still get hit with costs. My information isn’t recent: this happened to me a couple of decades ago. But it was over $100.
With AT&T, I can go on-line and see every call I made or received, as well as every single time my phone uses data. The judge may want to see the site and not just a print-out, but that would seem pretty irrefutable.
Great. You’;ve just proved that you didn’t use THAT phone while driving. Now… prove that you didn’t use any other phone, either?
Now, properly, neither the online report nor a hard copy are properly admissible as evidence, because they are hearsay. You might get them in under the business records exception, but you’re supposed to have the original records, not copies finished into a report.
I always thought the burden of proof fell on the police officer, not the victim. Now when we are accused of something we have to prove we didn’t do it?
By the way… PA has the new absurd law – that negated every local ordinance about cell phone use – whereby texting – and ONLY texting – is illegal and a primary offense. I’m still waiting to hear stories about people who are mistakenly pulled over for texting but get off because they were “only” dialing, emailing, surfing the web, or playing Angry Birds.
Where I live you’re allowed to not only call people but read texts as well. If a cop pulls you over for suspected texting (or however you say it) you are not required to show him your phone which means all you have to do is refuse to present your phone and he has no evidence. So unless he wants to give you a pointless ticket that will definitely be thrown out the no texting law is almost completely ineffective other than as a scare tactic. And I’m of the opinion that the only people who don’t text while driving are the ones that wouldn’t do it whether there was a law or not.
It took DECADES to get people to wear seatbelts, but now you have near total compliance. I don’t expect that forcing people to do something they should have the good sense to already do will get any easier with regards to cellphone/texting while driving.
On a related issue, I think anyone injured in a motorcycle accident who wasn’t wearing a helmet at the time should be automatically considered an organ donor. Alternately, perhaps medical insurance companies should be allowed to decline coverage to people injured because they lacked a helmet.
Everyone should automatically be an organ donor unless explicitly opposed. Opt-outs instead of opt-ins save lives while allowing religious folk to not blaspheme.
You would THINK there is near compliance, however based on the commercials currently running here in Oklahoma, no one is wearing them. There are a series of “Cops can tell when you are wearing your seatbelts” commercials. I feel like it’s the 80s again.
Police in New York have recently been issuing tickets to bicyclists who bike in the street but outside of the bike lanes… which is explicitly not a crime. (And kind of necessary, unless you think bicyclists will never need to make a left turn in a multi-lane intersection.)
Toronto cops were recently busted. Seems a sergeant actually made reference to the quota in writing recently and it got out. This editorial also mentions how, in 2006, cops in one division were allowed to go home early for the the day if they wrote a whole book of tickets in the day.
Just goes to show, cops are huge liars.
Oh, here is the link about that Toronto ticket quota. http://www.torontosun.com/2012/05/03/of-course-there-are-ticket-quotas
I expect I would have written down the officer’s badge number and filed a complaint, as my wife and I most emphatically do not have cell phones at all.
Sadly, while a police officer’s testimony is legally no more or less valid than any other person’s, the truth is that they generally are considered more reliable as witnesses, so in a he-said-she-said situation, the officer’s testimony will win out if there is no other evidence to consider.
There’s a reason for this. A person charged with a violation has a very good reason to lie (avoiding the fine) while the cop does not (they get paid the same no matter how they testify.)
Combine that with the fact that the cop is used to testifying and therefore isn’t nervous, and knows how to prepare for court, while the defendant is (probably) both inexperienced and unprepared, and you get a difference in credibility.
Nice to have a web site where you can post your own version of events without any chance of being contradicted. A police officer will make a stop/write a ticket based on his/her observations. Are you sure your wife wasn’t doing something that could have looked like she was talking on a phone? The officer could well have been mistaken. I dislike your accusation that the officer was lying/trying to make a quota.
SOG, I’m not sure what your point is: my wife not having a cell phone with her was fact: it was home with me at the time. If she were scratching her ear or something, that gives the police officer zero justification for writing a ticket, which is essentially swearing that he saw her talking on a cell phone. She offered to let him search her pocketbook and her car. He refused, telling her he knew she was lying.
What part of this are you saying can be justified?
It may or may not be effective, but it might be worth taking it to the local media. Especially during sweeps periods, this is the kind of thing they love to take on, as it’s something most people can relate to.
Two of my cousins, who happen to be reporters for a Great Metropolitan Newspaper (not a local one, unfortunately) told me the same thing.
Alas, there IS another possible explanation:
Bill’s wife has a second, burner phone which Bill doesn’t know about, and she was talking on THAT phone when she got ticketed. In order to explain how she got a ticket for talking on the phone when she didn’t have “her” phone, she made up this story about a belligerent cop. Obviously, Bill needs to search his house to make sure she wasn’t using the burner phone to arrange drug deals, and if that’s not it, consult a divorce lawyer because the other reason to use a burner phone is to hide an illicit love affair. I mean, I obviously can’t suggest that he go the Drew Peterson route (wink, wink) or anything, but again the obvious first step in covering up her disappearance would be to make a big public deal about the cops trying to pin a false “cellphone while driving” rap on her…