Today's news. I have seen this sort of thing before. It is going to be crazy up there. The cops will be really hungry to hand out as many tickets as possible to make their safety grant worthwhile:
The California Highway Patrol and San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, with the assistance of the Burlingame, Brisbane and Foster City Police Departments, will be conducting a Saturation Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP), operation on Saturday, August 20, 2016,
So this is really unfortunate to hear. It sounds like there will be 5 departments, looking to justify their efforts to their superiors so they can financially justify future STEP programs today. And although I will show up at Zero to help charge anyone, I feel I should not go because of past experiences.
Each and every time I travel through a new town I end up getting pulled over for my dog, Charger. Let me say it is not illegal to carry a dog on a motorcycle. In California alone there has been unanimous judicial verdicts allowing owners to ride with their furry friend. However it is uncommon enough that the police enforcement units are not aware of this. They see something different and they instantly start following, and before they know what law they think is being broken they initiate a stop.
I have a friend at the dog park who works in the call center for Santa Cruz PD and they said they had a meeting about me, as well as Scotts Valley and the Santa Cruz Sheriffs office and the Freedom Blvd CHP to explain to their officers that it was legal to carry a dog, not to harass me, and to explain nicely to 911 callers that are concerned about a dog on a motorcycle that it is under control and not to send police in route.
Had I known it was going to be such an issue I probably would have not gotten a dog. I am a lifelong motorcyclist and I do not drive cars. So that leaves me with a dilemma.
Here's the problem. Police officers aren't paid a lot. Those who could make more money either choose a different profession or get promoted. The ones who remain on the street are there for a reason. And for those who have had the interactions I have found that there is an ego issue, and they don't like it when they are wrong. And the problem is they have the ability to use their emotion to do whatever they want, and you are left to fight it later. If the salaries were higher there would be competition to hire good people, and those with behavior issues would be fired or not allowed to be on the street. It's hard to clean house when you are scraping the bottom of the barrel to hire anyone you can. Most rational people would not choose that job at the pay it gives as they have other options.
After hundreds of times being pulled over in the last year, I ask why I'm being pulled over, they almost always laugh and point at Charger and say "why do you think?" and I explain that I am not breaking any laws and have every right as a motorcyclist to be a man and ride with mans best friend. I have the general statute of California showing it is not illegal to carry a dog and show it to them. I then ask if I am free to go. about half the time or more they tell me no, visibly upset for being shown they are wrong. I have about 20 tickets in the past year for failure to signal, unsafe tires, improper mounted license plate, touching the double yellow, or other things I may or may not have done, but the point is the officer did not see my slightly worn tires or anything else while I was riding. He wrote that ticket or lied about what he saw me do because he was mad.
A couple months ago I'm riding with my friend Sean McLaughlin on Zero's from Scotts Valley to ChargePoint for a meeting we are on time for and we are riding the speed limit and not breaking any laws. But CHP starts following us, and slowly gets wedges himself between Sean and I in a very unsafe manner and gets himself 5 feet from my rear tire for a minute trying to make me do something wrong which I don't but yet turns his lights and siren on anyway.
I show him the papers, he doesn't like it, and he decides to just hold me while he tries to write a ticket for something. After 15 minutes Sean tells me he has to go as now he is late for the meeting too and realizes the cop is just being a serious asshole. Finally after a half hour the CHP wrote a ticket for failure to signal. And I asked when I failed to signal, and he said it was when I was pulling over on to summit road. I only did that because he was pulling me over!! These guys are just a waste of oxygen.
I've hired lawyers and they can get all these things dropped appropriately but it costs time and money. They use the motion to suppress evidence saying it was an illegal stop and my tires or license plate mounting or anything else I've been cited for should have never occurred. But the burden is on you to show the officer was incorrect over and over and over and over. If you ignore it, you get in trouble although it's not your fault.
It's a fairly sensitive issue to me and I still have outstanding tickets I have to appear for the stupidest things that would have never happened had I not had a dog with me.
I've explained this to my lawyer and after he understood the issue again and again and again, he said "in not so many words" to try to "avoid" them being able to pull you over if you can do so safely and without breaking any laws. He's basically saying try to lane split or move expediently to take random turns and park to avoid the hassle of being pulled over. Basically because he agrees there is nothing you can do once they pull you over if they are having a bad day. You can't argue with them on the spot. They will win, even when they are wrong. The only thing you an do is not let them pull you over to begin with by doing whatever you have to. Many times I just plain out run them by splitting lanes at a higher speed than they can safely go and then take an exit once I know they are far enough behind.
I really wish there was some government grant that would help pay for schooling so these officers could get higher education and then real jobs that benefit society, instead of having one designed to encourage them to make peoples lives miserable and having the authority to do whatever they want. They are in control. After Ive shown them it's not illegal to carry a dog and ask if I can go, and they say no, there is nothing you can do. One human being with an attitude problem has been given power over another. I can say "sorry but you are incorrect, I am leaving" and speed off. But they will feel the need to chase after you and I'm sure they would then somehow justify shooting me or something. It's sad. But I do everything possible now to avoid dealing with these complete morons.
Luckily all the cops around here know who I am and know I'm not breaking any laws and some even stop at lights to say how they love how happy my dog is or to ask questions about how I trained her to ride so well or just give me the thumbs up. That's the thing. Some cops are cool people and good at heart. It's just that 99% of them give the 1% a bad name.
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Topic: Bay Area people- second meetup at Alice's, Saturday 20 August (Read 2260 times)