[SPINTECK]

GOt pulled over late for not "stopping at the line of a redlight". Because I disagreed w/the officer, who admitted I stopped, he said,"I was going to give you a warning, but because of the attitude I"m going to give you a ticket."

I'd like to file a complaint, just wondered if any you know how to officially do that??

It pisses me off because I know when I break the law and this is a time that I didn't. I'll definitely fight it.

any advice would be great.

 

[SVPPB]

You live in a small town?
Have a recognizable car or bike?

If you answered yes to any of the above, don't file nothing.
Cops are a lot like the Mob. Screw with one, screw with all, especially in a small town.

 

[DavidMakalaster]

I got taken to the ground by a cop an hour ago for taking pictures of a cannon. It's a tradition in town (50+ years now) for whichever of the two main high schools that wins their annual football game to paint this cannon in town their school colors. I rode down there cause I'm only 1/2 mile away and snapped a few pictures. A cop pulled up, jumped out of the car, and forced me to the ground. He searched the crap out of me, asked me a ton of questions, and reluctantly let me go. FYI: I'm 24 years old with a beard. I'm clearly not one of the high school punks that painted it. It was BS.

Back to your question. No judge is gonna believe s**t you say before a cop. Don't bother going to court and wasting your time and possibly more money in court costs unless you're elligible for traffic school. Sometimes you just have to bend over and take it.

 

[kidwoo]

You were on a bike and let a cop address you?

shame shame..........unless it was an unbunnyhoppable road bike.


Only ticket I ever fought was a traffic violation and the guy never showed.

Good luck man. Sorry you were tonight's target.

 

[DavidMakalaster]

You were on a bike and let a cop address you?

shame shame..........unless it was an unbunnyhoppable road bike.


Only ticket I ever fought was a traffic violation and the guy never showed.

Good luck man. Sorry you were tonight's target.

The bike was about twenty feet away and I had a camera in my hand.

 

[jimmydean]

Let it slide, it only gets worse over time. Sweat little sh!t like that and you will shorten your life for no reason.

 

[Reactor]

GOt pulled over late for not "stopping at the line of a redlight". Because I disagreed w/the officer, who admitted I stopped, he said,"I was going to give you a warning, but because of the attitude I"m going to give you a ticket."

I'd like to file a complaint, just wondered if any you know how to officially do that??

It pisses me off because I know when I break the law and this is a time that I didn't. I'll definitely fight it.

any advice would be great.

My advice is be respectful with anyone you deal with. Cops are people too, and if you push his/her buttons, you'll make them angry. They are just as cranky at the end of a long day as you are, and they have guns, ticket books, tasers and pepper spray.

If you really feel aggrieved there is usually a professional standards, or citizen review committee you can complain to. It should be in the government section of the white pages. In this case your complaint won't get too far, you weren't abused, you don't have witnesses and as far as I can tell from your story the officer was going use his discretion to let you go until you argued with him. You're basically accusing the officer of having done his job.

My advice would be to do nothing, wait until your court date, show up. About 50% of the time the ticketing officer won't show up and you'll walk. If he is there keep a cool head and explain your story to the Judge, there is a chance he'll let you off, especially if this officer has pulled the same thing before.

 

[SPINTECK]

Piihb

wish i knew what that meant, was it ever revealed in that Piihb thread?? I don't have time to look it up, i have a ticket to fight.

thanks for the advice. probably won't go the complaint route, but i have to fight it because it's just not right. I know when I"m wrong, which is plenty, but this time the guy was just bored at the end of the month.

not stopping at the stop line?? you've got to be kidding me.

 

[MountainDrew]

Hey Spinteck. I have a friend in Pottstown, (Lower Pottsgrove actually) that knows a lot of cops. PM me the cops name and I will see if I can help you out.

 

[H8R]

Suck.

It.

Up.

Princess.

 

[a-swill]

My advice is be respectful with anyone you deal with. Cops are people too, and if you push his/her buttons, you'll make them angry. They are just as cranky at the end of a long day as you are, and they have guns, ticket books, tasers and pepper spray.

If you really feel aggrieved there is usually a professional standards, or citizen review committee you can complain to. It should be in the government section of the white pages. In this case your complaint won't get too far, you weren't abused, you don't have witnesses and as far as I can tell from your story the officer was going use his discretion to let you go until you argued with him. You're basically accusing the officer of having done his job.

My advice would be to do nothing, wait until your court date, show up. About 50% of the time the ticketing officer won't show up and you'll walk. If he is there keep a cool head and explain your story to the Judge, there is a chance he'll let you off, especially if this officer has pulled the same thing before.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[greenhood]

50% of the time that I have have dealt with cops they have been fair. 50% of the time they have been dicks. Either way, a judge is going to side with a cop most of the time if you file a complaint.

Sounds apathetic, but don't bother fighting it.
Maybe you should ask that that Manimal guy what to do.

 

[johnbryanpeters]

Suck it up. You don't have grounds for a complaint.

 

[J_B]

Here in California, when you file a complaint it doesn't go to a judge so I'm confused but it could be differant in PA.

If you feel that you didn't stop before the white line, then go to court and plead your case.

Here in CA, or at least my department, complaints regarding attitudes etc, you contact the Sergeant or supervisor and file it with them. Anything and everything else gets handled at internal affairs.

You have his name and badge as he cited you so just call up or go down to the station and start there.

Some advice, don't be a jackass when you call or go down there. It makes you look like your just some a-hole off the street that's pissed because he got a ticket and wants to get back at the piglet.

Tell your side and let it be.

 

[LordOpie]

...he said,"I was going to give you a warning, but because of the attitude I"m going to give you a ticket."

what a c0ckmunch.

And cops wonder why people are slowly losing respect for them.

 

[amishmatt]

what a c0ckmunch.

And cops wonder why people are slowly losing respect for them.

Slowly?

 

[stevew]

Do it.

When he makes your life a living hell, post about it here so I can laugh.

 

[X3pilot]

If you go to court, don't rely on the cop not being there. Little known fact that they have a cop that sits in court to "attest" to the written report and represent the police side. But, I have gone a couple of times for speeding tickets. First thing, wait until you get a court date notice and then request to stay it until later due to work or something. Then, go in the second given court date and you'll most likely have to talk to an assistant DA or some lower ranked lawyer for the State or City and if you explain it to them rationally, take a big bite of humble pie and nod and say yessir or yesmaam alot, they have discretion to throw it out as well.

 

[laura]

wish i knew what that meant, was it ever revealed in that Piihb thread?? I don't have time to look it up, i have a ticket to fight.

thanks for the advice. probably won't go the complaint route, but i have to fight it because it's just not right. I know when I"m wrong, which is plenty, but this time the guy was just bored at the end of the month.

not stopping at the stop line?? you've got to be kidding me.

Wait, how do you not know PIIHB yet? It's the be all end all to every one of life's little problems.

 

[MikeD]

Yeah, I'd just go to your court date and calmly state your case; that's the forum provided to contest the cop's citation. In D-M's case, a complaint might be more appropriate.

To file one, I'd just call the desk (non-emergency number) and ask what the procedure to file a complaint is...going to be different in every office.

 

[LordOpie]

I had only one 'personal' experience with filing a complaint. My ex-sis-in-law filed one and was harrassed for a year. She wound up moving to another county.

If you're married with kids (which you are), I wouldn't file one.

 

[Echo]

You can definitely plead your case to a judge.

But file a complaint? Seriously, think about that for a second. What avenue do we have for "filing a complaint" against a cop? Contact internal affairs and have him investigated for corruption, because he gave you a ticket for talking back to him? You will get laughed right out the door.

Reminds me of the dude in Transformers when he calls to report his car stolen. "Send everyone, the whole squadron! Don't ask me questions, my dad runs the neighborhood watch!"

 

[ire]

Most cops I've dealt with are d!cks, but who can blame them? If I had to take sh!t from ppl all day long I would be in a bad mood too. With the complaint? I wouldn't do it, too much risk for no pay off....go to court and fight the ticket

 

[Echo]

Most cops I've dealt with are d!cks, but who can blame them? If I had to take sh!t from ppl all day long I would be in a bad mood too. With the complaint? I wouldn't do it, too much risk for no pay off....go to court and fight the ticket

That's kind of the point. These guys are human. And they spend a lot of their day, every day, dealing with scum that the rest of us have the luxury of avoiding like the plague. So sue him for not thinking a "failure to stop at a stop sign" ticket is the end of the world.

 

[MikeD]

That's kind of the point. These guys are human. And they spend a lot of their day, every day, dealing with scum that the rest of us have the luxury of avoiding like the plague. So sue him for not thinking a "failure to stop at a stop sign" ticket is the end of the world.

Yeah, but his problems shouldn't be my problems. Everyone's human, and everyone has bad days, but you have to be a professional...if you can't be, then you're in the wrong profession. Especially when the choices you make affect other people in reasonably-to-very significant ways. (That said, I'm completely against a perfectionist attitude; like we've both said, police are people too...)

 

[DirtyMike]

GOt pulled over late for not "stopping at the line of a redlight". Because I disagreed w/the officer, who admitted I stopped, he said,"I was going to give you a warning, but because of the attitude I"m going to give you a ticket."

I'd like to file a complaint, just wondered if any you know how to officially do that??

It pisses me off because I know when I break the law and this is a time that I didn't. I'll definitely fight it.

any advice would be great.

Advise, Let it go, less attitude next time, stop at the line like the law says, then move forward

File a complaint, Go to your local sherrifs/police department, show your ticket, ask to file a complaint.

FYI, your complaint will be dismissed before it gets looked at, if anything the oficer might get into trouble for offering a warning in the first place, its his job to enforce the law, not let you slide. Chances are he only pulled you over in the first place cause it was late, and wanted to check you out.

 

[$tinkle]

you should find this cops address through either voter registry or property search, then wear a sandwich board with your complaint succinctly painted on it & march up & down his street.

alternatively, you could buy an ice-cream truck franchise & drive up & down his street blaring "turkey in the straw" when he's off his shift.

these methods will surely result in him reconsidering this travesty of justice.

 

[manimal]

what a c0ckmunch.

And cops wonder why people are slowly losing respect for them.

newsflash: most people on this forum aren't the type to have much respect for the po-po in the first place.

just about everyone is a punk a$$ little b!tch at some point in their life and whines about a ticket. hell, i had more than 12 in 2 years.

i hate those dam fascists pigs that do their job.

 

[LordOpie]

just about everyone is a punk a$$ little b!tch at some point in their life and whines about a ticket.

In fairness to SPINTECK, I don't think he's complaining about ticket as much as the very unusual response from the cop. I could be wrong.

hell, i had more than 12 in 2 years.

Where do you live that you can get that many.

I'm pretty sure five tickets here in two years gets your license suspended. Seven tickets after that, you're in jail.

 

[OrthoPT]

I had only one 'personal' experience with filing a complaint. My ex-sis-in-law filed one and was harrassed for a year. She wound up moving to another county.

If you're married with kids (which you are), I wouldn't file one.

I'm with LO on this one. File a complaint, which will likely get you nowhere, then pop up on the cop's radar as a troublemaker. Then you're much more likely to encounter more future BS from the police than you ever expected. It's not worth it.

 

[Echo]

Yeah, but his problems shouldn't be my problems. Everyone's human, and everyone has bad days, but you have to be a professional...if you can't be, then you're in the wrong profession. Especially when the choices you make affect other people in reasonably-to-very significant ways. (That said, I'm completely against a perfectionist attitude; like we've both said, police are people too...)

Agreed. I think the vast majority of cops do a much better job than I ever would, which is why I don't do that job. And the bad cops, well the stuff they do is a hell of a lot worse than making smartass comments while handing out meaningless traffic infractions.

 

[morethanjake543]

I used to be cool with the police in my town. They're doing their job and I'm respectful for that.

But then one of my friends got arrested. The reason doesn't matter. The police came to his house with a warrent the day after thanksgiving. He didn't put up a fight. He did, however, get verbally assaulted with racial slurs and derogatives. My friend is pretty sensitive and he came back in shambles.

I guess my point is this. I stlll respect my local authorities. . . to some extent. Half of the guys I run into are really nice. Not nice like, "Hey, let's go grab tea together some time!", but nice enough where you're happy that they're just doing their job. The other half, on the other hand, seem to be ridiculous. These are the type of cops that'll yell at you for riding on the sidewalk when the street is too crowded to even walk your bike.

 

[wreckedrex]

Most cops I've dealt with are d!cks, but who can blame them? If I had to take sh!t from ppl all day long I would be in a bad mood too. With the complaint? I wouldn't do it, too much risk for no pay off....go to court and fight the ticket

I've only run into one asshole cop, and he was off duty at a someone else's retirement dinner. Every time I've been pulled over or had any other interaction with an officer they've been very professional and competent. I generally have a great deal of respect for them and understand that it can be a ****ty job. That doesn't give them leave to take it out on me (or you or the op) though. Seriously, no one who exercises that much authority should get the "only human" defense.

 

[manimal]

In fairness to SPINTECK, I don't think he's complaining about ticket as much as the very unusual response from the cop. I could be wrong.


Where do you live that you can get that many.

I'm pretty sure five tickets here in two years gets your license suspended. Seven tickets after that, you're in jail.

yeah, spinteck has a valid point...sorry, i didn't differentiate that.
and yes, i had 12 tickets in 2 years. i was living in CA and had a FL drivers license. CA did not have reciprocity with FL and therefore, did not report my tickets to FL so my license was never suspended. a crotch rocket sure does make it easy to get tickets, especially when you can't keep the front end down
i was also able to do driving school to cut down on the points. my insurance was stupid high though. but you know what....it was my fault and i was never pompous enough to argue w/ the cop, i learned early on that if you want to argue, bring it to court.


as for advice: take it to court. the WORST that can happen is that the judge will let the ticket stand as is, he won't make it any worse. i am in court once a month as part of my job and i can count on one hand the number of times that a judge hasn't lessened a driving charge if the defendant has shown up looking professional and with a good attitude; just taking the time out of your day says a lot. i'm not sure what they have where you live but here it's called a PJC (prayer for judgment continued), and if a judge grants this in your case it means that your charge is dismissed as long as you don't have a similar charge within a given time. if you are charged again in that time frame you are stuck with the new charge and the original.
hint: DO NOT go in there saying, "i know i stopped at that line and the cop was just pissed because i questioned him." DO SAY something like this: "I was unaware that i may have stopped after the line as the officer states, however, i felt that my actions were not unsafe and i did come to a complete stop and clear the intersection before continuing on."

believe it or not, the court system, insurance companies, and the DMV are not involved in some sort of conspiracy to take all of your money arbitrarily. most judges are not out to make sure that your insurance premiums go up because of points. if it's money they're after, they'll simply just make you pay the costs of court but dismiss the charges.
one more thing: if you think the cop was just being a dick "at the end of the month" (there are no such thing as quotas,...they are illegal) and stopped you because he was bored then i suggest that you spend some time checking up on the statistics of that intersection's crash history. there are usually a lot of preventable crashes at stop sign intersections caused by people "rolling" through it. it works like this; accidents happen, reports are run, the bean counters request that enforcement action be taken at said intersection to try and prevent accidents.
oh yeah, don't get an attitude at the scene....that garbage doesn't work for anyone, regardless of profession. try copping an attitude at the pharmacy when they're running slow on filling a prescription...see how much that helps.

for what it's worth, the cop probably shouldn't have TOLD you that he was giving you a ticket for being an ass instead of a warning....but, it's still under HIS DISCRETION and filing a complaint is pointless in this matter. btw, i have had several occassions where i could have arrested or given a ticket and the driver/passenger decided, by their actions, that they'd rather be in handcuffs. then upon searching the vehicle, incident to arrest, i discover either a gun or drugs or both.
so a lot of times, people give attitude to try and make the situation too uncomfortable for the officer to want to deal with them much longer. just something to think about.

 

[SlapheadMofo]

I came out of the woods last week after a day of trailwork on our local XC stuff. Six or so of us had our cars all parked in the same dirt pull off, but for some reason, I see only mine has a bright orange ticket stuck under the wiper. I'm walking up to the truck kinda pissed, thinking why the hell I did I get one and nobody else did, and WTF is it for in the first place, as I couldn't see anything illegal in where I was parked, except maybe it was blocking fire access or something, but it was private property so WTF...? I yank the ticket out and turn it over and see it was given 'for being retarded' and my fine was a '12 pack and some Guitar Hero'. It was from my neighbor, who a few years back got heckled so much for not writing enough tickets that he quit the force in one town. Said he had only given out two tickets in a year, and both of those were ONLY because the attitudes of the drivers. So don't be a dick yo.

 

[Echo]

one more thing: if you think the cop was just being a dick "at the end of the month" (there are no such thing as quotas,...they are illegal)

I don't know if it qualifies as a "quota" but around here I've heard "unofficially" that road patrols "should" be able to issue one ticket per day. And the sad thing is, the ones who don't hide beside the road with a radar gun (because they are busy doing real cop work) actually do get to a point eventually (not on a monthly schedule) where they are told their ticket count is low, so then they have to go spend a few hours handing out tickets. They don't like it and they would rather not do it, so I can see them getting irritated with some kid who wants to argue the symantics of whether or not he stopped for a stop sign.

 

[SPINTECK]

Lots of good advice. I'm not going the complaint root because unlike the cop, i don't want to mess with someone's livelyhood.

I really didn't tell the whole story. FOr those who are bored.

I stop at the light, see the cop. His buddy had another car pulled over on the left. I make my right. 1/4mile down I see the cop behind me and he gets a red light which I made. He went throught the light w/out his cop lights. He follows me another 1/2 mile and then pulls me over- I wasn't speeding.

he says license and registration. I asked why he pulled me over. He said I ran the light. I said, well I disagree. He then admitted that I stopped, but I didn't stop at the line and then he made the statement,

I was going to just give you a warning, but because you're giving me attitude you're getting a ticket.

He writes it up. I asked what his name was, he said it's on the ticket. I asked what office is he out of, he said it's on the ticket. I asked who the other officer was who had pulled up behind him. He said I don't have to answer any of this and walked back to the cars. Granted, it took him over 20 minutes to write the ticket, so I know he was messing with me.

So I grab a pen a paper, keeping my interior light on. I got out of the car holding my hands in view and walked to the two officers ( i know I could have been shot, but we're talking 150bucks here I asked for the other officer's name and he was very nice, gave me all the info I asked for and spoke well. Then the cop that wrote me the ticket starting being nicer and said I gave him attitude.

After a very nice discussion we agreed to disagree, I thanked them for the conversation and said I'll see you court. So the attitude thing did become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the ticket had already been written.

It's just not right that these bored cops in my yuppy townships can pull you over for a very small reason and take away almost a days work after taxes for such a mickey mouse thing. Luckily I work second shift and the cold weather is coming, so I have time to fight this stuff.

I fight all tickets, even when guilty, because I don't want to encourage townships to use tickets as a cost-effective revenue steam.

 

[DirtyMike]

If you go to court on this one, chances are that the ticket will actually get dismissed. Judge will probably just give you hell, and tell you that your day in court is payment enough and tell you to make sure to stop before the line next time. Not sure where your at, but here in Cali, if you cross the line when coming to a stop, then your just as guilty as running a redlight. Like i said earlier, chances are he was pulling you over for something lame ass, was full on planning on giving you a warning, and for the most part, probably wanted to smell your breathe. You did say you were out late, and Most cops in this area are on the look out for Drunk drivers from about 11pm to 3am.