On our first court date Mr. CD was more than thirty minutes late for his appearance.  This did not go over well with the Justice of the Peace, who sternly asked for an explanation as to his tardiness.  Mr. CD showed great humility and gave the court his apologies, saying he had missed one of the three public transit buses required to get him from his home to the court house. 

The JP gave this some thought before accepting Mr. CD’s apology, and then sent him to registrar to set another date with the warning to NOT be late for his second court appearance. 

When Mr. CD sputtered and asked why his case couldn’t be heard then, the JP said there were other cases to be heard whose defendants had been on time.

I love a judge with a good, healthy sense of justice, don’t you?

Our second court date came around a few weeks later.  With only a few moments to spare before the courtroom opened, I still had not seen Mr. CD when scanning the numerous faces waiting in the corridor.  Sprinkled in among defendants were other police officers and bylaw officers.  I recognized one motorcycle officer and went over to say hello.  We ended up talking about the reasons we were in court this day, and shortly after realized we both had previous dealings with Mr. CD.

I was frustrated the defendant was not yet at the courthouse; I suggested perhaps Mr. CD had missed his bus and it was the following reactionary comment from my motorcycle colleague that can be described only as divine intervention.

“What are you talking about?  Mr. CD’s already here.  I saw his car parked outside,” he said.

The next few moments were a flurry of Q & A, and by the end of it we had determined the following:

• Mr. CD’s driver’s licence had been revoked and he was currently a prohibited driver
• Driving while prohibited is an arrestable offence
• While none of the police officers present at court could put Mr. CD behind the wheel, Mr. CD’s bright blue Corvette was parked out front of the court house
• A check of the licence plate on the Corvette confirmed Mr. CD as the registered owner
• the probability of Mr. CD being the one to have driven the Corvette to the courthouse was high
• my motorcycle colleague was going to sit in on the trial and watch, as he knew Mr. CD could get up to some serious shenanigans when in court.

As I took my place in the court gallery beside the motorcycle officer I looked around.  The one person I was searching for was absent, but just as proceedings were about to begin Mr. CD snuck in the door and took his seat.

The Justice of the Peace went around the room, everyone stated their names, and cases were called to the bench.  All the guilty pleas were heard first, fines and adjusted payment schedules were doled out, and time ticked down to when we would take the stand. 

Finally, we were called.

The two of us stepped forward and proceedings began with my taking the witness stand and explaining the facts as they occurred in the original street racing post.  Mr. CD then had the chance to cross examine me, which he did.  That’s when it got weird.

Between questions on how long I had been a police officer and inquiries if I had ever been permitted to give expert testimony on my ability to give a visual estimation of a vehicle’s speed, Mr. CD introduced his argument that there was no way, in the 1.5 blocks we had travelled on the date of the alleged infraction, that a Crown Victoria weighing in at xxx pounds could have reached a velocity of xxx kilometers an hour, even if travelling at a high rate of speed down a hill with a 5% grade.  And yes, that’s really how he talked.

After much deliberation of the calibration of my police vehicle’s speedometer, of my years experience as a driver, and of the sheer ridiculous thought that Mr. CD had been street racing on the day in question, the JP finally instructed Mr. CD to get to the point. 

Mr. CD held his tablet of notes up with a flourish and he paced back and forth as he started his cross examination.  Several of his questions prompted a terse response from the bench with direction to keep the questions on subject, and when such a demand is made after the JP pushes his glasses to the end of his nose so he can better visually penetrate the person he is looking at, you had better heed the warning

Eventually, Mr. CD took the witness stand and gave his version of events.  He denied almost everything, saying he had been driving at the speed limit, admitting only to exchanging words with the motorcycle riders; he said they simply commented on his nice car.  He even went so far as to say his beloved blue Corvette was in storage as he was abiding by the driving prohibition he had been issued.

It was at this point my motorcycle officer colleague quietly slipped out of the courtroom. I’m the only one who noticed.

At the end of the traffic trial, the Justice of the Peace found Mr. CD guilty of the excessive speeding infraction, stating the validity of the officer’s evidence weighed heavily on his decision.  Mr. CD did not have his fine reduced, but he was given an extra few months to pay it down.  Mr. CD gathered his papers together, stuffed them in his briefcase and stormed out of the courtroom.

I gave the customary bow to the JP and pushed out of the courtroom door only to find my motorcycle officer friend waiting outside.  He saw me and quickly pulled me into a nearby doorway.

“We have his car under surveillance.  If he drives, we’ll have him,” he said in a conspirator’s whisper.  

We turned our radios to the channel the traffic officers were using and listened to them give updates as Mr. CD was followed covertly out of the courthouse.

“He’s walking down the sidewalk.  He’s out on the street walking towards the driver’s door of the Corvette.”

A two second pause.

“Shit! A patrol car turned down the street – he stepped away from the car and back to the sidewalk!”

Another pause, this time a little longer.

“He’s back at the Corvette.  He’s opening the door and he’s in the driver’s seat.  Ignition.  We have ignition!” the excited voice exclaimed, “He’s northbound on Hornby!”

Moments later, with a news TV crew in tow, one of the motorcycle officers stopped the Corvette, handcuffed Mr. CD, and arrested him for driving while prohibited. 

God knows where the TV news crew came from, but the entire incident made the 6 o’clock news that night.

Their story was a thing of beauty.

Karma – the force generated by a person’s actions to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person’s next existence

Here is a Cole’s Notes version of what takes place in traffic court – keep in mind this is an extremely basic explanation:

• When you dispute a ticket you are given a date and time to attend traffic court
• When your day in court arrives, go to your designated courtroom – do not be late. Do not wear a hat, or if you do, make sure to take it off when you walk in to the court room.  Be respectful.  Know what you are going to say. 
• You will be asked by the Judicial Justice of the Peace (the ‘judge’) if you are going to plead guilty or not guilty.  Many people stall at this point, as they want to plead guilty but simply have an issue with paying the fine.  If this is the case, say you want to plead guilty with an explanation
• If you plead guilty, or guilty with an explanation, the Justice of the Peace will discuss the infraction and fine with you to come to an agreement over payment/time to pay etc.
• If you plead not guilty, then both you and the officer who issued the ticket will get to tell your own sides of the story.  There are usually no lawyers involved, unless the disputant is raising a legal issue (see links above).  You will have the opportunity to question/cross examine the officer, and vice versa
• The Justice of the Peace then makes their decision and hands down their judgement

So there you go -  a little bit of background to set the stage.

The driver of the Corvette noticed them noticing so he inched his car forward to come alongside the nearest rider.  The driver’s side window came down, an arm extended out of the opening, words were exchanged, and the helmeted head of the nearest rider jerked up in the gesture, “What, you wanna go?”

Apparently the Corvette driver did – the light changed to green and all four of them were off, their tires spitting up debris from the roadway to pepper the front of our car.

Our province had just introduced a zero tolerance policy on street racing, and by golly, we had ourselves a street race unfolding right in front of us.

We went after them and so intent were they on their race that not one of them noticed the dark grey, unmarked Crown Victoria bearing down on them.

We clocked them at 100kms/hr, downhill, through a road construction zone (it was after the work day so no work crews were around) and they were still accelerating towards the next red light when we hit the lights and siren.  They had to be stopped before they killed someone.

The motorcycles immediately slowed and started to pull to the side.  The Corvette, on the other hand, made a hard left hand turn down a side street and sped out of sight.  We chose to stay with the motorcycles and radioed in the licence plate and direction of travel on the Corvette.  As several other police units were already headed to the area the Corvette was stopped a couple of blocks away by a responding cruiser. 

By the end of it, after a call to the 24 hour police-only line designated for street racing incidents, the three bike riders were each issued with a driving prohibition (if I recall, each was for 30 days) and got to watch as their motorcycles were slung onto tow truck and impounded.  To give the riders credit, they were polite, cooperative and apologized for their actions.  I almost felt sorry for them, but not quite.  I’ve seen what happens when street races go awry, and it’s devastating when innocent people are killed and maimed. We handed them their prohibitions and sent them away in a taxi.

The Corvette driver was an entirely different story. 

He was arrogant, rude and tried to speak in the volumes of legal-eeze that showed he was a frequent flier in traffic court.  He first refused to hand me his drivers licence, but acceded when he saw there was no point, then he called me sweetheart, and then he said he’d sue me for a ‘wrongful police stop’ and have my job.  In other words, he was annoying.  I mean, really annoying.  But, as I say to others, don’t let it get personal and just do your job.  So we did.  With gritted teeth.

Here was the kicker, though – the Corvette driver held an out of province drivers licence, and at that time, with street racing legislation still in the infant stages, there was no recommendation on what to do in a situation like the one we faced.  A missed loophole stated the street racing legislation was effective only for drivers holding a BC licence.

We ended up issuing the man a ticket and fine for excessive speeding.  That’s all we had the power to do at the time, and somehow it just didn’t sit right.  We had already dealt with the motorcycle riders, and I thought either all of them should get the same prohibition, or none of them.  Keep it fair, right?  The people at the street-racing line let us know they would look into it and would liase with the man’s home province to try and figure out what to do.

We had to let the Corvette driver proceed.  He grinned his smarmy grin, gave us a ta-ta wave with his ticket, buckled up and started his engine.

“I’ll see you ladies in court,” he said, and blew us a kiss as he drove away.

Coming up next in Part 2, read how the traffic court dates unfold and what happens after.