Then you can sit out there all night!

[wagegoth]

One night, when I was driving a hoopty ('86 Lincoln Town Car), I was heading home at about 4:30 am on a Monday. There was a cop car following me all through town (Palo Alto, home of Stanford University, rich heart of Silicon Valley). I knew he was there. I kept my speed down and made sure to signal and be the perfect driver. He followed me onto the freeway onramp, then pulled me over just before I actually got on the freeway.

He approached on the right side and I put down the electric window. He looks in the car, sees me, a 40ish white female, dressed in a t-shirt and long skirt, and he face just falls. Almost implodes.

He asks me what I'm doing out so late. I reply that I'm on my way home from work. He then says, "From which street corner?"

I looked him full in the eyes and said, "I work for a law firm." He face fell farther.

He finally ended up giving me a fix-it ticket for a headlight.

I told the story to a CHP officer I knew. He asked me why I didn't say, "Oh, the corner across from your wife." I told him that I wanted to get home that night.

Basically, the cop thought he had spotted a homey from East Palo Alto, maybe returning from a drug delivery, and thought he'd get a nice little bust and get to hassle somebody. I harshed his buzz.

[Captain Trips]

Blas' post made me think of this story:

My bf's best friend's mom has a big brown van with "Jerry Bear" stickers on all four sides. Once, on a roadtrip vacation from Utah to Oregon, the mom got pulled over at least 3 times when she wasn't doing anything. Cops would give her some standard unprovable excuse such as "weaving". Bf's best friend complained about it when bf went over to visit. Bf laughed, took out a razor blade, and scraped off the Jerry Bear on the back window of the van.

Its been a few years now, but she's never been pulled over since.

True, the cops can't search without "probable cause." But your friend's mom discovered one unfortunate fact: in both Utah and New Jersey, having Grateful Dead stickers on your car is legally defined as "probable cause." I guess they don't realize that there are thousands of Dead Heads who don't do any drugs, or even alcohol. (They are called Wharf Rats.)

I guess it's that police theory that "all Dead Heads make LSD in their bathtubs."

[Andara Bledin]

How about not having anything you don't want found in the first place? I've never had a problem with all the run-ins I've had, including them suspecting me of a possible B&E, becuase I've always been straight forward with them and never had anything on me or in my possesion that would make them call for a warrant.

That's all well and good, but sometimes completely out of your control. My brother was on probation for getting caught having dope on him, so he kept his surroundings spotless. He got pulled over for speeding while on the way home from a concert with his best friend and because he was on probation, the cops decided to search the car, since they didn't need a warrant or probable cause for anyone on probation.

They found a baggie of shrooms in the glove box where his friend had stashed it when they were pulled over. My brother spent a week in jail before the friend's mother put up the bail, using her house for it. The (no longer) best friend never apologized, said anything in my brother's defense, or anything. The mom, on the other hand (she was a jewel) got my brother a lawyer.

Luckily, by the time they had used the sample for testing, there wasn't enough left to prosecute and so the case had to be dropped. My brother had nothing to hide... but his friend and passenger did.

One thing I learned while taking personal law classes in college (studying to be a court reporter, but never finished) was that the police could not be prosecuted for perjury if they lied on the stand.

Also, while most cops are good, and some are bad, there are a large number who mean well but are criminally misguided. Just look into the cases of Stephanie Crowe (police let transient with blood on his clothes go free while they psychologically abused the victim's brother and his friends into writing signed confessions) or look into the details of the investigation around the JonBenet Ramsey case (where the investigators decided the parents must have been involved and one went so far as to furnish false information to news agencies implicating them).

^-.-^