I’ll not be the one to tell you being a police officer is all roses, but the rewards far outweigh the difficulties.  There are long and odd hours, missed weekends and stress on the body.  The men and women who have chosen this ultimately rewarding law enforcement career know it comes with some amount of sacrifice and understand the merit of contributing to our society as a whole.

Officer’s families make similar sacrifices and it rests with the officer to ensure his or her family is acknowledged and thanked for their supporting role.  I, for one, could not do this job if it weren’t for the love and support of my husband, children, family (thanks mom and dad!) and friends, which is important, as they are the main reason behind my continued passion for and involvement in policing.  Even though I long-ago found my purpose in law enforcement, the ‘purpose’ itself is forever evolving and I am constantly evaluating what it actually is and what it means.

Everyone must find their own purpose – what is yours?

************

The end of 2011 is fast approaching.  Wasn’t it just last month I started my dog-handling career?  Of course not – years have passed, and I can count my time remaining as a dog handler in the same fashion new mothers give the age of their babies – 24 months, 18 months, 12 months… This time frame is the only downside to having a dog as a partner, because their lives are so much shorter than ours.  Those who have dogs in their lives, regardless if the dog is a work partner, assistance dog, pet or companion, will know exactly what I’m talking about.

The end of 2011 also brings a close to a memorable year, during which the world’s cameras were zoomed in and focused on Vancouver on June 15, 2011.

All of us know the riot is a black mark against Vancouver – it will take a while for the mark to wear away and I’m okay with that.  It should take some time for the wound to heal, because if it heals too quickly we may forget how poorly our City was treated.

Perhaps that should be one of our purposes as Vancouverites – to remain passionate about our City and to always remember what happened while at the same time not allowing it to consume us in continued anger and/or fear.  There must be continued growth, at all levels of policing and citizenship, if we are to learn from the events and the aftermath of June 15th.

************

From a blogging perspective, it’s a been a steady if somewhat leaner year in regards to posts.  I’ve finally added Twitter to the blog as it’s much easier to blast out information in 140 characters than to sit at a computer and craft a post….somehow, though, Twitter’s ease feels like cheating on an exam…besides, if given the choice between quality and quantity, I always prefer the former, particularly for important stuff.

Give-aways always tally the most comments (who doesn’t like free stuff??) and I’ve a couple of give-aways lined up for the new year – one is a signed novel written by a fellow VPD officer…it’s a great read and I’ll share more about it in January.

Posts on what actually happens in police work garner more focused and sometimes critical attention.  The ‘In the Line of Duty‘ series resulted in many comments and emails on the topic of when a police officer is killed and what citizens and officers can do to prevent similar tragedies.

Sgt. Ryan Russell (Toronto Metropolitan Police Service, Ontario), Constable Garrett Styles (York Regional Police Service, Ontario) and Officer Vincent Roy (Police de Bromont, Quebec) all made the ultimate sacrifice in 2011.

They will never be forgotten.

************

Then there’s you, the reader.  You are a lively bunch with your comments!  Even so, email tends to be the way most of you communicate, especially if you come to the blog through my articles in The Vancouver Sun.  Dozens of you get in touch every month and I read every single email.  Thank you for your continued support of police officers everywhere.

Here’s a little bit about you, the reader:

• in order of the volume of readers, you are from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, South Africa, India, the Philippines and Spain
• 706 of you have clicked the “Who Are You?” poll on the right side bar – I won’t list the results here as you can simply look to your right and view the results
• you love to read and look at photos of police dogs, as every time there is a ‘give-away’, site visits skyrocket
• you obviously care about your law enforcement officers

• #44 – Eunice, comment left November 9, 2011 at 3:24 pm
• #61 – Jo Ewing, comment left November 12, 2011 at 12:28 pm.

Eunice and Jo, please send me an email at sandra@behindtheblueline.ca to verify your identity and to provide a mailing address so I know where to send your 2012 Police Dog calendar.

Thank you to everyone who participated.  We will have more calendars available for sale at the beginning of December (we have completely sold out), so if you have not been able to purchase one you will be able to then.

*

For those of you not familiar with the case, Robert Pickton was convicted in 2007 for the murders of six women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (map).  He was also charged in the murders of twenty more women, all of them from the Downtown Eastside (DTES).

************

As a matter of association, I am not at liberty to speak of the investigation or resulting public inquiry.

What I will say, however, is how several of the now missing and murdered women had an impact on my early years in law enforcement.

I knew several of them through working in the Downtown Eastside, and two of them from when I was a correctional officer with the British Columbia Correctional Centre for Women, called BCCW for short (it is now the Burnaby Youth Custody Services Centre).  It is the memories from my time as a guard that remain more true, as I was interacting with these women as they went about the daily routines of prison life vs dealing with them as a result of a 911 call.

Two woman always comes to mind.

One, I last saw when I was walking west in the south lane of the 100 East Hastings St.  She was on a fire escape landing, far above my head.  She watched our progress the same way a rabbit watches the passage of a fox, partially hidden and her face marred by the shadows of wrought iron.

The other woman – it is her face I see most often when talk turns to the pig farm.

I picture her family and her loved ones.  Her friends.  Her laugh.  How she joked at BCWW, calling me ‘Blondie’, telling me sbout her son when it my shift to supervise her unit in the jail.  How, a few years later, once I was on the job and she had her freedom, she saw me on the street out front of the Balmoral Hotel and called out, ‘Hey Blondie! I was wondering what happened to you!’

She was different.  More wary.  Not as friendly.  She was smart, funny and had her wits about her.

She shot me a wink the last time I saw her.

************

The stone in my gut when I read her name as a possible murder victim.  I thought of what her family was going through, and pushed the memories away.

“There’s no way she would fall to a serial killer,” I thought, “She’s way too street savvy.”

Then it was confirmed through DNA.

************

To her family and loved ones, you know of whom I speak.  You are in my thoughts and prayers, as are the family and loved ones of all the women.

*

Visits to the Vancouver Police Museum and the Vancouver Archives (my new favourite place), scouring boxes of old photos excavated during our department’s recent move to a new building, the salvage of wooden signs and an old window frame from the garage-turned-kennel that housed the dog squad for decades (see below for some more information about our old building) – all of this speaks of how our department used to be.

It’s fascinating.

Dog Squad 1960

Letters dated from the 1920′s outline the creation and implementation of the Women’s Bureau, and the hiring of women as police officers.  The style, sentence structure, grammar and word choice are of a time when horses and carts outnumbered motor vehicles, and of when women were not expected to do a “man’s” job.

There are photos, memos, newspaper clippings, letters and publications – all for the reading.

What I have noticed, though, is a huge gap in the history of the VPD and of our city.

No matter where I look, the years 1939 to 1950 are missing.

World War Two.

If you have any suggestions on where I should look, please leave a comment or send me an email to sandra@behindtheblueline.ca

************

Old Dog Squad Building, under Cambie St. Bridge

The building has since been razed and is now the south/east corner of the police parking lot.

It was the building I transferred to in 2005, when there was the immediate issue of where to put me.  There was no women’s locker room or bathroom, so the guys all chipped in and cleaned out the janitor’s closet and stuffed a skinny locker into the tiny space so I would have a private place to change.  It was so small that I could not bend over to tie up my boots without my head hitting one wall and my rear hitting the other, so it was not without a small amount of jubilation that I rejoiced when we finally moved to an updated facility.

That said, I still miss the repeated comments of, “Hey, you forgot to tie your boots,” when I stepped out with laces flapping.  As routine would have it, I always had to shuffle into the office to lace ‘em up.

It was a building steeped in tradition, memories and reputation, and I am honoured to have been able to call it home.

While the building had many positives in terms of tradition and memory, it had declined into very poor working and boarding conditions for the dogs assigned to the section.  Our new facility is fantastic for both dogs and handlers, and yes, I’m over-joyed to finally have my own locker room.

In fact, I think I have the nicest room in the whole building!  ;)

*

************

There were a few other college students sprinkled through the mix of volunteers at the regular Saturday night session of Citizen’s Crime Watch.  Our job was to be the extra eyes and ears for the police, and even though we drove our personal cars, we were connected to our ‘own’ police officer through a basic radio system plugged into the car’s lighter.  That night I was partnered with Suzanne, a fellow criminology student, and we headed out with a list of problem areas, at the top of which was a few blocks in the downtown core which had been experiencing a rash of theft from autos. We were instructed to keep an eye out for anyone or anything suspicious and report it back to our officer.

A couple of hours and at least one coffee later, Suzanne and I were prowling around parking lots, side streets and multi-tiered parking garages.  If memory serves me correct, her car a very used but relatively reliable Toyota Supra.  Attached to the roof with an industrial strength magnet was an impossibly large antenna, and if nothing else, it made Suzanne’s car look like a giant hybrid insect.  It was not the most covert set-up, but we believed ourselves to be budding sleuths and thought nothing of the obvious communication tower above our heads.

The headlights of Suzanne’s car arced off a cement ramp on our ascent to a roof top parking lot filled with cars.  Suzanne drove slowly and we looked out of our respective windows for anything untoward, my spidey senses telling me something was going to happen.

And something did.

The man was tucked up between two cars.  He was dressed all in black and most of his attention was on the driver’s door handle as he furtively worked the lock.  The passing of our car distracted him for a moment and he snapped upright, looked in our direction and quickly walked around to the back of the car to place himself between the trunk and the cinderblock wall in what appeared to be an effort to conceal himself.

Ever mindful of being spotted, we pretended to ignore him when we drove by and as Suzanne manoeuvred her car into an empty parking stall that afforded an excellent view of our suspected perp.  What we hadn’t considered was that if we had an excellent view of him, then he also had an excellent view of us.  Thinking back, the entire set up was like a bad cop movie where the supposedly covert surveillance is a dark coloured Crown Victoria parked across the street from the gang house.  Yes, it was that bad.

In any event, our perp obviously decided we were not a threat because he moved back around to the door and started to work the lock again.  From our position of ‘concealment’, Suzanne gave me updates that I, in turn, relayed via radio to our Crime Watch police officer:

“He’s got a screwdriver.  He jamming it into the lock on the driver’s door,”  I said.

“What does he look like?” our officer asked.

“He’s a guy, in black clothes, with a screwdriver,” I said.

“What’s the licence plate on the car?” he asked.

I gave it to him, proud of my ability to use the phonetic alphabet.

“Okay, there are other police units on the way.  Try and keep an eye on him until they get there,” he said.

“Alright.  Um, I think he’s seen us,” I said, “He’s walking towards us.”

“Does he still have the screwdriver?”

“Yes.”

At that point, it became clear our ‘perp’ was the owner of the car when he asked if we could call him a tow truck as he had locked his keys in his car.  He waved and walked over, tucking the screwdriver into his back pocket.  I raised the hand holding the radio mic in a reflex return wave, which, unknown to me or Suzanne, pulled the radio connector out of the car’s lighter and cut off our communication with our officer.  Not realizing our officer could no longer hear me, I continued to provide updates that the fellow breaking into the car was probably the owner and that he was quite friendly.  I asked our officer if he would call a tow truck for the man, and it wasn’t until I tried for a third time to elicit a response that I realized the connector had come loose.

I plugged the connector back in, and at about the same time the night came alive with sirens.  Our roof top positioning provided a wonderful view of multiple police cars racing into the block with sirens screaming and red and blues flashing.  I commented that it was too bad we didn’t have a real police scanner to listen to what action was about to unfold before us.  Our perp-turned-fellow-observer agreed and the three of us wondered as to what had drawn such a quick police response.  I got on our Crime Watch radio and asked.

“What’s going on by the parking lot we’re in?  There’s police cars everywhere,” I said.

“You guys is what’s up,” another volunteer answered, “You okay?”

“Yes. What do you mean?”

“We all heard the guy was coming at you with a screwdriver and then your radio went dead.  Officer S. has called out the calvary.”

Uh oh.

Tires screamed on concrete as responding police cars raced up the ramp towards us.  Officer S. appeared in a full out sprint, his gun drawn as he looked everywhere at once.  My heart plummeted to the bottom of my stomach as I considered my future in law enforcement had been as effectively unplugged as my radio connector.

I waved Officer S. off before he tried to deal with our new friend, who was now looking at us with a high level of suspicion and likely wondering what the heck the police wanted with two college kids.  Quickly, I explained what happened and took full responsibility for the technical blunder.  Officer S. first got on his radio to tell all responding police units to stand down, then he holstered his gun, shot Suzanne and me a heated look and leaned over and put his hands on his knees.  He took a couple deep breaths and then told us to never scare him like that again.

We got back into Suzanne’s car and drove down the ‘ramp of shame’ past several backed up police cars.  We were sheepish and embarrassed to have caused such a fuss, and I was trying to make myself as small as possible in the passenger seat to avoid being seen. It was no use.  A couple officers seemed amused, a couple looked down right pissed off, but one officer stopped us before we could make good our escape.

“You the two Crime Watch volunteers?”

We nodded.

“Don’t feel too bad.  At least you’re out here trying to help. And besides, that was the best call of the night so far,” he said, not without a touch of humour.

Relieved, we thanked him.

“Good job on spotting the guy.  Just find a better hiding spot next time,” he said.

************

Suzanne and I had been trying hard and we made a couple of mistakes, the biggest of which was our poor positioning when it came time to watch our suspected theft from auto suspect.  I consider it a mistake versus a poor decision, as we honestly believed we were in the best spot.  A poor decision would have been knowing there was a better hiding spot but not using it out of sheer laziness.

It’s okay to make mistakes – everyone does.  And while there is a difference between poor decisions and mistakes, it is important to define the line between the two.

Mistakes can often be avoided with proper training and preparation.  Mistakes are a great learning tool, as is the humbling experience of making one in the first place.  I’ve been there a time or two, and while my ability to find good hiding spots has improved, I fully realize I am not above making mistakes in the future.  The key is to keep learning from them.

Hopefully others can learn from them, too.

************

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.

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.