Thanks, Officer Watkins: reflections on getting a ticket.

This morning on my way to the college, I got my first ticket in a dozen years.

Exiting the 210 freeway, I failed to come to a complete stop while making an otherwise legal "right on red" onto Hill Avenue.  Seconds later, I saw the Pasadena Police  motorcycle behind me, red lights a-flashing.  Instantly, I felt my heart begin to race.  There's something about being pulled over that's enormously anxiety-producing! 

But as I brought my car to a stop, I said to myself: "Hugo, you absolutely deserve this ticket.  You know what you did, you've done it a thousand times before without being stopped, and it's high time you got slapped for it."  As I was taught to do by my high school driver's ed teacher, I kept my hands on the wheel until the officer (a very nice fellow named Watkins) got to my window.  I gave him my license and registration, and answered the inevitable question: "Do you know why I stopped you?"

"Yes", I told him.  "I made a right on red without coming to a full stop."

"That's right", Officer Watkins said.  "Why didn't you stop?"

For about one thousandth of a second, I thought about making up some sort of fanciful story.  I thought about techniques I've heard for talking your way out of a ticket.  (Mind you, I've been pulled over a few times before and let off with a warning.)  But this morning, I knew damned well I deserved the ticket, and I gave Mr. Watkins the only possible, plausible answer:

"I wasn't paying attention. It's completely my fault."

I remember the last time I got a ticket: it was September 1994, and I was living in West Los Angeles.  I was pulled over for rolling through a stop sign just north of Santa Monica Boulevard. I deserved that ticket too.  In the twelve years since then, I've driven at least 200,000 miles in the USA and Britain.  I've owned or leased four or five cars, and rented dozens.  And I've broken the speed limit thousands of times, rolled through thousands of stop signs, made at least eight hundred unsafe lane changes, failed to yield, failed to signal, failed to wear my seatbelt.  All without being ticketed once.  Based on the accumulated weight of my motoring sins, I earned today's citation ten thousand times over!

After Officer Watkins had given me my ticket, I thanked him.  I made sure to do so after I had signed the citation, so he would not confuse my gratitude with an effort to talk my way out of the consequences of my errors.  I told him, honestly, that I had needed a "wake up call."  I also told him that I appreciated the work that he and his fellow officers did, and that I hoped that he would have a safe and happy day.  Had I been in my home town on the Monterey Peninsula, I would have offered my hand -- but I decided against it this morning.  In any event, I wanted to make it clear to him that at least one person he pulled over today was grateful to be held accountable, and thankful for these men and women who do such a thankless and yet necessary job.  As a traffic cop, you meet a lot of people -- very few of whom are happy to make your acquaintance.  I was happy to meet Officer Watkins this morning, and I wanted him to know that.

I'll pay the ticket gladly when it comes.  It's not that I enjoy paying fines, mind you.  But I know that the money I will pay will go to help support vital services in the county and the community.   I know that I have deserved innumerable citations in the past for unsafe decisions I've made behind the wheel from Pasadena to Perthshire, Carmel to Carmarthen, Fort Lauderdale to Fort William. Whatever the cost of this ticket, it's a small price to pay for my many mistakes in the past.  And if it has the effect I hope it has, it will remind me to be a more attentive driver.

Officer Watkins, you may just have saved my life and the lives of those whom I love.  Thanks.

Comments

[lorie]

I hope you were wearing your seatbelt today! :)

[Chris Clarke]

I've broken the speed limit thousands of times, rolled through thousands of stop signs, made at least eight hundred unsafe lane changes, failed to yield, failed to signal, failed to wear my seatbelt.

Oh. so YOU'RE the guy.

[djw]

Good on you. I'm always profoundly annoyed with the commonplace whine that police should be out there "stopping real crime/criminals" rather than giving good citizens traffic tickets. Wherein, of course, real crime is operationally defined as "crimes I don't commit out of convenience and habit."

[Hugo]

I was wearing my seatbelt. Why do I always wear my seatbelt? Because in 1993, I got a ticket for not doing so. Tickets change my behavior very effectively.

Chris, yeah, that was me.

Well put, DJW. The police are there to help us all remain accountable to each other.

[Ed]

At least you've driven in rather "civil" traffic surroundings. I've never wanted to drive whenever I'm in Bali because the scene just looks terrifying:

- many two-way roads that are only the width of one of our average traffic lanes here (most often than not, even narrower);

- sewer ditches that are around a couple feet deep in some places (no room for spatial errors);

- the seeming endless gauntlet of zipping motorbikes (sometimes with whole families on a single vehicle), dogs, chickens, monkeys, cows, food vendor carts, and temple festival processions (At least the latter are now patrolled by the village security force called "pecalang");

- one-way grids in the larger towns that make little sense: there's a long major one-way street in the tourist enclave of Kuta that is northbound... except for a block in the middle of the roadspan, where it's southbound(!);

- lane divisions are merely suggestions most of the time, even though driving orientation is officially much like the UK.

And if you're involved in an accident with a Balinese citizen, it's automatically your fault - "I belong here; you don't. So if you weren't here in the first place, I wouldn't have crashed into you." Pretty impeccable, huh ;)?

[tps12]

This is weak. It's at least debatable what the police "are there" for, in their eyes or in the eyes of the politicians and voters who put them there. Yeah, don't whine, step up and pay the ticket for your harmless infraction, no question. But thanking him? Just be glad you're not young or non-white.

"Uniformed whores/They who wish to hurt you/Work within the law" - Morrissey

"Fuck tha Police" - NWA

[tps12]

And djw, rolling through a stop sign is not a crime, it's like a "violation" or something. If Hugo were to contest the ticket, he wouldn't be tried before a jury of his peers.

[Hugo]

TPS12, those song lyrics will get you banned pronto. Anti-police rhetoric does little good to minority communities, particularly in urban areas. It is the absence of effective policing, not its presence, that poses the greatest threat to young people of color who are most vulnerable to crime.

And no infraction is "harmless", really. Our traffic laws are there for a reason. I was pulled over today not because of my color or my sex or my age, but because I did something fundamentally unsafe that could have caused serious harm. I am grateful I was called to account.

[Hugo]

Ed, I will take your comment as advice never to drive in Bali. I don't drive in Colombia when I visit, and indeed, except for a few times when on service trips to Mexico, have never operated a motor vehicle in the Third World.

[tps12]

I don't know, Hugo, effective policing might be part of protecting members of minority communities in a perfect world.

But when police officers are enforcing our country's racist drug laws, or processing the accused in a justice system that is far from even-handed in doling out punishment, then it is difficult to see them as maintaining safety and order within a community; they are more likely to be perceived as coming from without the community, defending majority values at the expense of others.

And I think that perception is accurate to some extent: when you have someone like Rudy Giuliani talking about "cleaning up" the city with more policing in certain "trouble" neighborhoods, how is a rookie cop from Staten Island to understand his or her job description? Isn't a skeptical minority member just being realistic in understanding the police force's function the same way the majority and the police themselves probably do?

It's not the fault of the individual cops, but they're complicit, they're part of the system: it's unfair to ask people to overlook this fact and extend to cops the benefit of the doubt, especially in communities where the police have historically demonstrably operated against the interests of the community. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong, but claiming that anti-police attitudes are not primarily symptomatic of malaise strikes me as victim blaming.

[djw]

As a technical matter, you're probably correct. Let's agree to call them legal infractions and move on.

also, tps12, I agree with many of your concerns. All the more reason I'd rather see police enforcing traffic laws (which undoubtedly has a positive social impact, driving is a dangerous and deadly activity and making people do it with more caution is clearly a social good) rather than fighting the war on (some people who use some) drugs.

[Hugo]

tps12, if you had said what you said in your second comment the first time, you'd have my support. Quoting NWA wasn't very helpful.

The LAPD is now becoming "majority-minority". Most new academy entrants are non-white. Are they merely pawns of a dominant white society, selling out their own people to enforce the dictates of the ruling class? One or two of my gray-beard Marxist friends might believe that, but it seems a bit over-simplified to me, not to mention incredibly offensive to the hard-working men and women of color who work in law enforcement.

I'm aware that I have white privilege when I encounter the police. But my white privilege didn't protect me from getting a richly deserved ticket from the equally white Officer Watkins this morning, nor should it have.

On the other hand, the fact that it's my first moving violation since 1994 (despite being an easily distracted driver) makes me wonder: if I were a black man, driving in the same car in the same places in the same way, would I have been pulled over far more often these past dozen years? I'd be willing to believe so.

[glendenb]

I've joked for years that speeding tickets are really just a tax on driving fast. Really, if we as a society wanted to stop speeding, we would find a way to stop it. But we don't - we keep building roads and cars more than capable of 100 miles an hour or more. We collect revenue (quite a lot actually) from speeding tickets, I'm convinced speeding tickets are just a tax on fast driving.

I said this few years ago and horrified my law and order father. He argued that I'm breaking and that's completely wrong. I said, I always speed. When I get a ticket, it's just a tax on all the other times I wasn't caught. I don't complain when I get a ticket since I know the law and can choose at any time to follow it.

[djw]

I dunno, Glendenb, this is probably true for some people. I certainly know a lot of people who curtail their speeding because they can't afford tickets and, more importantly, the insurance premium hikes that come with them. It shares some similarities with taxes, but it also (as taxes sometimes do as well) serves to decrease the occurance of that behavior. As for your point about roads, I think the fact that people can drive 100MPH on some roads is insufficient evidence they were constructed for that purpose. It could be the costs of not constructing those roads are determined to be more costly than the deterrent effect on would-be speeders of not constructing them would be valuable.

[DaveTheRave]

I did something fundamentally unsafe that could have caused serious harm.

Why does it take a cop to make you stop this kind of behaviour (that you've admitted to doing daily for years) Hugo? It's really great that you're up front and all confessional here, but sometimes bad behaviour is just bad behaviour, unmitigated by an open-hearted confession. Why do you choose to put other people's lives at risk?

[Douglas, Friend of Osho]

tps12: Perception don't make something so. I'm not keen on cops and it doesn't take a genius to see the court system as riddled with inequity, but cops didn't put drug laws on the books. And what majority values in play here are so derision-worthy? Freedom from violence and mayhem? The bourgeoisie aren't the only people who want that. By your logic, rectification of the scenario you described would involve cops tearing a bottle of Cristal from a gangsta rapper's hands, since high-end consumption is definitely valued by the majority. But that would involve the admission that the minority (whatever that is) values exactly what the majority (again, whatever that is) values and that would take all the fun out of seeing the police as the system itself.

Hugo: DaveTheRave is right. Here's a Christian solution: any time you feel like you need to speed up, remind yourself that it's far better to be fifteen minutes late to a function than early to Heaven. Especially when you yourself posit that there is no such thing as a good death.

[Hugo]

Indeed, folks, I'm not defending my behavior. I have a "blind spot" when it comes to my driving that I need to work on. Sometimes, we need "wake-up calls", and I am hopeful that Ofc. Watkins gave me mine yeterday morning. But I don't make light of reckless driving, not for a second.