Helloooooo, people….hang up the phones!
I’m astounded at the number of people talking on their cell phones and driving at the same time since the new law came into effect on January 1, 2010. So, in case you missed it, here it is – it’s a bit boring so skim if you must, but please, at least read my last two sentences:
Prohibition against use of electronic device while driving
214.2 (1) A person must not use an electronic device while driving or operating a motor vehicle on a highway.
(2) Without limiting subsection (1), a person must not communicate by means of an electronic device with another person or another device by electronic mail or other text-based message.
Use of Electronic Devices while Driving
“electronic device” means
(a) a hand-held cellular telephone or another hand-held electronic device that includes a telephone function,
(b) a hand-held electronic device that is capable of transmitting or receiving electronic mail or other text-based messages, or
(c) a prescribed class or type of electronic device;
“use”, in relation to an electronic device, means one or more of the following actions:
(a) holding the device in a position in which it may be used;
(b) operating one or more of the device’s functions;
(c) communicating orally by means of the device with another person or another device;
(d) taking another action that is set out in the regulations by means of, with or in relation to an electronic device.
$167.00 and three points on your drivers licence, or $20-$100 for a hands free device to use with your phone.
It’s your choice.
A friend of mine sent me an email with this photo attached – some fellow says he out did himself this year with his Christmas decorations, but he ended up having to take down the fake ‘person’ as too many people were trying to rescue ‘him’, including one 55 year old lady who just about killed herself trying to lift a 75 lb ladder. Apparently, the police told him to take the ‘person’ down, as ‘he’ was going to cause an accident.
I’m not sure if the story is true, but the photo brought to my friend’s mind a call we both attended to just before Halloween.
The call came in to 911 from a frantic citizen about a body hanging from a tree. The caller was hysterical, and even though the police department, fire department and paramedics were on the way, the caller refused to go near the body to check how the person was doing. It looked like a suicide by hanging, but because the tree was located on a residential street, we all knew the suicide had likely just happened and the troops were en masse.
As luck would have it I was very close to the call and ended up being the first one there. My heart did a little double-step in my chest when the body came in to view – the feet were dangling six feet above the ground and the body was swaying gently as if finally coming to rest from a violent death. I parked and was in a full sprint towards the tree when the upper portion of the ‘corpse’ came into view.
Instead of a ghastly swollen human face staring down at me, there was a tiny little pumpkin head with a painted jack o’lantern grin.
Good one.
Even the officers in the next car to arrive (my friend who sent me the email) were convinced the body was real until they saw the pumpkin face.
The original caller to 911, still parked down the street in his truck, was disgusted and relieved the body was a fake. He left the area, angry that someone would play such a cruel joke, saying, “Stuff like this is hard on my heart.”
The actual owners of the body lived in the house adjacent to the tree. Indeed, their house was completely decorated for the occasion, and they were shocked their Halloween prop had caused such a stir. They had not intended for anyone to think the body was real, which was evident by the pumpkin head. We told them to take it down for fear of someone else would injure themselves by trying to save pumpkin-man. A compromise was reached, and they laid the body down in their front yard.
I always love a good joke and can always appreciate the unique flair some show when getting their homes ready for the holidays, and I do think the attached photo is hilariously ingenious. But sometimes, decorations can be too realistic for everyone’s good.
In the time between issuing the excessive speeding ticket and our the first court date, the Street Racing Hot Line worked out the wrinkles in their new system and figured out how to deal with Mr Corvette Driver. As a result, Mr. CD had his licence revoked for a number of weeks and he found himself wallowing in the ranks of prohibited drivers.
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
Before continuing with the saga of The Street Racer, it’s important that everyone understands what happens when a driver attends traffic court in order to dispute a ticket issued to them by an officer. Several sites outline the process in detail – The Provincial Court of British Columbia, The Canadian Bar Association, Courts of BC, and a Vancouver Sun article gives a fly on the wall perspective.
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.
Several years ago while working in a plainclothes general patrol capacity, my partner and I came up behind three motorcycles and one bright blue Corvette lined up at a red light. It was obvious the motorcycles were not with the Corvette as the riders were checking out the sports car with some admiration.
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.
Police humour is humour at it’s best, and we are some of the most ingenious pranksters around. It helps keeps stress down, and as everyone should know, you always feels better after you’ve had a laugh. Even if the laughter is at yourself.
Also, tonight is a friend’s first night out on patrol by himself down in Florida after having recently graduated as a police officer, so this post is for him – keep an eye on your back , Evan! Don’t let your car keys out of your sight, keep tabs on your duty bag, and really make sure the sides of other officer’s mouths aren’t twitching in an effort to hold in the giggles if they ask you to do something suspicious.
So, without further ado, a few practical jokes from recent years:
- A police recruit arrived at a ’call’ with her field trainer. She parked outside of a house they were to attend, at the top of a hill, and she and her FTO went inside. When they came out a half later, their police cruiser was no where in sight. They both ran out to the street and were about to radio in that their car was gone when the FTO saw the cruiser, at the bottom of the hill, buried to the door frames in someones hedge. Without coming over the radio, they sprinted down the hill. By this time, the rookie was in full panic mode and told her FTO she was SURE she had placed the car in park. As they crawled around the car, trying to see how much damage had been sustained to the car and to the hedge, the rest of their squad crept up on them and yelled, “Surprise!” and held up the cruiser’s spare set of keys, which they had obtained earlier in the night from the rookies FTO. They had driven her car down the hill and gently placed it in the hedge without so much as a scratch. Talk about a Kodak moment!
- Another officer was getting a tour of the old city morgue when a ‘body’ on a gurney suddenly sat up as the officer walked past. Of course, the officer’s partner was right behind him to ensure he didn’t put a couple of rounds into the ‘corpse’.
- An officer with several years experience parked his car by the station and went in to write up a report. About twenty minutes later there was a broadcast over the radio of a police vehicle getting broken into so he went outside to see if he could help. When he got outside he realized his cruiser was the one that had been ‘hit’ - the window was broken and all of his things were gone. Of course, everything was safely tucked into the trunk of his car, and the broken window had simply been rolled down and glass from another incident sprinkled on the ground by the door.
There are many, many more, but I do not want to be accused of giving away all of our trade secrets.
Does anyone else have any practical jokes they feel like sharing? I’m sure Evan would appreciate it!
A few days ago, Christopher over at The Warrior Poets tagged me with ‘Honest Scrap’, where you have to tell ten honest things about yourself.
This was a tough one as everyone else who was tagged related personal things about themselves, and as this is a police blog I didn’t want to get into that angle of it. So, instead, I’ll share ten honest things about my police officer self:
- I’m scared of heights. You may ask yourself what this has to do with police work, but officers often find themselves up high on bridges, roofs, balconies etc. The night I had to climb down a fire escape and the top bolts let loose from the ancient cinder block I thought I would either faint or throw up. I white-knuckled it to safety and then sat on the hood of the police car to gather myself together. And just because I’m scared of heights doesn’t mean I balk at climbing something – it’s just that I prefer to have my feet on terra firma.
- Even though I’m surrounded by big dogs everyday, I have a soft spot for small dogs. REALLY small dogs.
- It drives me absolutely batty when an officer deals with a person without practicing officer safety. Hands in the pockets of your uniform pants or uniform jacket DOES NOT constitute officer safety when in close quarters with a suspect. Get your hands out of your pockets and keep them ready.
- I think I’m a good driver. But then hey, doesn’t everyone?
- I will do my best to protect you, even if it means risking my own life in the process.
- My work comrades really are my brothers and sisters. Sometimes we disagree, sometimes we argue, and sometimes we storm off on one another in a fit. But the rest of the time we lean on one another when life gets tough, we share laughs and memories, and we are bonded together by our intertwining desires to make this world a better, safer place.
- I really do not like issuing traffic tickets, but will do so when absolutely required.
- That said, bad/poor/inattentive drivers are a huge pet peeve of mine.
- I make sure to tell my family I love them every time I walk out the door in the event it’s the last time we see one another.
- I have a tiny guardian angel pendant engraved with the initials of my husband and children, and a tiny police badge engraved with PSD Hondo’s name and badge number. Both are stitched to my bullet proof vest near my heart and are with me always.
The alley was lit by the faint glow of street lights. Overhead power lines crisscrossed the piece of sky visible between the buildings and turned the night into a patchwork quilt. Garbage bins lined the angles at the bottom corners of buildings, spilling refuse in scattered piles.
“Breathe, damn it,” my partner said, and thumped the man’s chest for the third time.
We had been walking our beat in the Downtown Eastside when a woman told us of a man unconscious from a drug overdose. We were directed to this alley, where we found the man slumped in a filthy alcove.
A needle was stuck in his arm and his head lolled to the side when we tried to wake him, and I knew the man was dying. We pulled him from the alcove and radioed for an ambulance.
Kneeling beside the motionless form, my partner pressed his fingers to the side of the man’s neck and threw me a grim look. He couldn’t find a pulse. My partner wiped the back of wrist across his mouth in an unconscious gesture.
We could not perform mouth to mouth on this man. He was an IV drug user in an area where Hepatitis C and HIV were rampant, and we could simply not risk becoming infected.
I felt horrible for it.
Joining my partner in a crouch, I looked closer. The man’s face was hard from years of drug use and covered in grizzled stubble. Scabs scattered across his cheeks, and a lock of greasy hair fell across his brow. He could have been anyone.
Surely, though, he was someone.
He was someone’s son. He had loved, played, been a part of someone’s life. He had fears, goals, likes and dislikes. His addiction did not make him inhuman, it only made him addicted.
If not for the addiction he could have been me.
Faint sirens floated on the air, coming closer, and I placed my own fingers on the side of his neck. His skin was warm and supple, but there was no heartbeat. My hands moved to his chest.
Stillness.
I looked away and willed the ambulance to hurry. He could not die like this, in squalor. In the cold, outside, lying mere feet from a rank mound of human waste. It was not right.
Gripping the man under his arms, I cradled his head against my belly and dragged him into the center of the lane, away from the unspeakable. My partner helped me lower him to the ground, and we stood watch.
Within moments, an ambulance came into the lane and the paramedics were a blur of controlled chaos. The man’s clothing was cut off, heart rate monitors were attached to his pale chest, and a breathing tube was forced into his airway.
A pair of gloved hands with laced fingers pushed his ribcage up and down, up and down, up and down.
A flash caught my eye as one medic produced a small glass vial. She dipped a needle into the cap and withdrew a syringe full of liquid. Quickly checking the amount, she plunged it into the man’s arm, forcing the dose of Narcan into the man’s veins.
We waited. Hands pumped ribs. The breathing tube made a low sucking noise. Seconds felt like hours. Minutes felt like forever.
Then, as if rising for the first time, the man’s eyelids fluttered and then flew open as he drew in a great rasping breath. His hand clawed at the breathing tube, and he succeeded in pulling it out.
The initial breath was followed by a second, and then a third.
His eyes, a startlingly beautiful blue, blinked up at us, and tears coursed from the corners to be lost in the hair at his temples as he tried to fathom where and who he was.
Another one, brought back from certain death.
When I first started with policing, one of my trainers said something I’ve never forgotten. It was such a valuable piece of wisdom that I repeat it to every recruit who comes out with me for a shift.
“You will see bits of yourself in many officers. Take what is good about the differing styles of police work, and combine them to make your own style – just remember to be yourself.”
One such recruit came out with me about three years ago. She impressed me that night, with her six weeks of police experience, and ever since I’ve paid attention to how she acts when I find myself at one of her calls.
I see a bit of myself in how this police woman conducts herself – she’s confident, calm, street smart, and doesn’t take any crap. She’s also fair.
But for all those similarities, I see what her makes her even better. Maybe it’s the way she carries herself, or the way she deals with suspects, or the way she interacts with the public, but when I observe her working, I learn things. Even though I’ve more than a decade of seniority on her, I find I still learn when observing officers like her. She’s a hell of a good cop.
Of course, now that I’ve written this post, everyone’s going to be trying to figure out who I’m talking about. Comrades close to me know who she is as I’ve told them to pay attention to her work ethic, so I’m not going to embarrass her by identifying her.
Let it be enough that she is an example for all officers, and she stands out just that little bit because she’s such a solid cop. If you’ve had the good fortune to work around her, you know exactly who I’m talking about.
There are many officers like her in this department, so don’t be surprised if you ask me who she is and I reply by giving you a police man’s name who has her same work ethic. I could have used the example of a few police men for their spectacular work habits and the way they too are role models for newer officers, but I’ve been waiting to say,
“You go, girl!”
It’s amazing how well some people can hold it all together until the last possible minute.
Yesterday morning I stopped a car with the suspicion the driver was impaired. He was impaired all right, but not by alcohol. ‘John’ had various narcotics racing through his system, and even at 0600 hrs, he was a jittering and a jiving.
John did his best to not twitch his way off the sidewalk once I asked him to step out of his vehicle. His eyes, which were wide open and the size of hard boiled eggs, seemed to want to pop clear out of his head – thank God they didn’t, as that might have sent me screaming off into the dark. His hands fluttered around like two small birds, as if trying to escape into the early morning sky, and he kept them pressed together at his waist in an effort to stem the flurry of activity.
John’s conversation was very sincere, and he told me the only drug he had consumed was his doctor prescribed Percocet. As if his admission made it okay. The painkiller has several side effects, including restlessness, nervousness, and a flushed face to name a few (thank you, Google).
I suspected John had added at least one street drug to his system based on the evidence clearly visible inside of his car, but by then, I didn’t need more proof - John’s ability to drive was impaired well beyond any test I could administer.
He took his driving prohibition in stride – almost with a sense of relief. Once he had his slip of blue paper in hand and was watching his vehicle get towed, John gave up trying to hold it together. He relaxed and let his hands fly about and let his body do what it wanted to do, which was twitch, and bend, and make sudden jerky movements.
Now that he no longer had to pretend to be sober, he let it all hang out and it was shocking – John’s behaviour was the type I think every preteen and adolescent considering their first joint or crack pipe or line of coke needs to see first hand.
I was sorry I was unable to film him, to show him at a sober moment what drugs do to a person. Because, really, he was one of those people freshly caught in the downward spiral of drug use - he was driving an expensive car, had expensive things, but was already hooked on at least two drugs, not including the Percocet, responsible for the deaths of hundreds. If he gets no help, he’ll lose it all in months, if not weeks.
It was not without a pang of frustration and sadness that I sent John safely on his way. I watched his departing back, his white jacket soon the only thing visible in the gloom. His jacket twitched to the side as if jerked by a maniacal puppeteer, and John stooped into the gutter in search of a cigarette butt, and then finally, he disappeared from view.
I want to help people like John, but the problem is just so huge and I’ve no idea where to start.
