Fighting the fuzz

OK, here's the scenario:

On Wednesday evening, returning to the office from a far away hoops game, I was pinched for speeding. Last stretch of road through a medium-small town, only driver on the road for the ride through, and the cop said I was doing 41 in a 30.

Was I traveling above the limit? Yeah. Was I doing 41? No. Fucking. Way. But whitey said I was.

Some things I'd like to point out:
1. When whitey first hit his lights to follow me, he was to my right, facing oncoming traffic on a two-lane road with no shoulder. Who's the bigger danger to motorists? Me puttering along by my lonesome, or him sitting in the dark in a black car?

2. My car, bought new in 03, recently hit 96K miles, and at least 75 percent of that, if not more, is work related. Never had a driving issue in my current shop, because I know not to go that fast through small towns.

3. He said the radar is accurate to plus or minus 3 mph. So can the fucking thing be tweaked to make passing cars faster than what they are? Kinda like a scale? My absolutely ignorant guess is yes, it can. If that's the case, I wasn't doing no fucking 41 mph.

The fine is $75. Believe it or not, I've got a sense of fairness about the issue. If I felt I made a $75 mistake, then I'd have no problem with it. If I felt I inadvertently endangered other drivers, I'd be fine with it. But I was the ONLY soul on the road. My (ample) gut feeling is that this fucker was bored and tired of sitting in his car on a lonely Wednesday night.

I've decided that if I can argue the ticket without incurring more money, I'm going to. No, I'm not hiring a lawyer. If $75 buys me the chance to chew on a judge's ear, I'm doing it Good Will Hunting style.

By now you either think I'm whiny or righteous. I just don't like it when people try to stick a $75 pole up my ass. So should I fork over the money, or stand tall before the bench, if the bench doesn't demand more dough?

 

Fight it if you can do so reasonably, but try not to get into any unnecessary arguments. Saying the cop was a greater danger to motorists might not sit well, especially if he shows up. The ticket's for speeding (right?), so adhere to that argument - if he said the radar was accurate to +/-, there may be some way the judge could knock it down a notch, given your clear history.

But definitely fight it. Gotta stick it to the man.

 

Challenge the ticket in court. Chances are, with a plus-11 ticket, either the cop won't show up or the judge will reduce it so you won't get any points and possibly drop the fine a few bucks. Just don't be an asshole and you should be OK.

 

Oh, the old + or - 11 argument.

(Show up in court. Present you case. If you lose, you ask for traffic school and pay the fine).

 

Don't speed, and if you do, pay your fucking fine and quit whining about getting busted breaking the law.

 

Just showing up in court and pleading not guilty will get you a reduction to fewer mph over. In my state, the fine stays the same but the points are reduced.

Of course, you also could go to an auto shop and have them give you a statement saying your speedometer was off and they fixed it. That could get you down to an equipment violation.

 

The only argument I could possibly see you winning is on the idea of the radar being inaccurate. See if there is a way to pull the records for when the radar was last calibrated. If it wasn't at the start of the cop's shift, you might have a case. No idea if the +/- 3 MPH standard is tolerated in your state, but offhand that sounds suspicious as hell to me.

 

Pay the fine. Then take a dump in a paper bag, light it on fire and leave it on The Man's front porch.

 

That's close enough that you should fight it.

And we don't all drive 24 in 30-mph zones.

 

So who's "whitey" and what are you implying but using the word?
Are you black and saying this wouldn't have happened if you were white?

Or is "whitey" some regional euphemism for all cops?

 

"Whitey" is The Man, and he's trying to keep all of us down.

 

Whitey had me over to the men's club Friday for lunch. He's cool.