Weird tickets and lessons learned.

Long ago, I learned that if you ride the same, or nearly same, route every day, eventually they will catch up with you if they have reason to do so... So don't give them reason, don't play where you have to ride.

Yep!

My commute is 18 miles of pretty much straight highway. I could blast along at 85 or so no problem, but I see the same handful of cops and highway patrolmen every couple of weeks. I have no need to agitate them.

Be careful with that, in my experience there is not much that pisses them off more.

I'll usually do it when I either know I already have the fine for certain, or that they can't give me any.

Just how many stories do you think there are on the Interwebz that talk about 1.3 parsecs/min?

It can be hard to really think straight in the moment of being pulled over. I got popped by a plain clothes officer in an unmarked car. He was so busy yelling at me that it wasn't until I pulled away that I realized I had no idea what department had issued me a ticket. Was it a local? A statie? I really didn't know. But I didn't even think about asking him to identify himself - I wish I had.

Some people told me I should have fought the ticket on the grounds of him not identifying himself (and yelling and swearing at me.) But I didn't have time to fuck with it. I was breaking the law, so I paid my fine and moved on.

In some states the police using a plain car have to be in uniform to pull anyone over. We've had people carjacked and shot by criminals posing as plainclothes officers.

We have had that problem too. If my wife had been pulled over by that hot head I would have been pretty pissed.

In 2010 when the olympics were going on this place was a police state. I think we had 3x the usual LEO's and they seemed to be very bored.

I was on the highway heading out of town to the ferry dock and knowing how many cops were around was behaving in the slow lane doing the speed limit.
Lights flash and I get pulled over, no clue as to why. The RCMP officer (out of towner, we don't have RCMP in that area) writes me up a $118 ticket for my license plate being vertical... Then when checking over my papers asks me if the bike is stolen. Nope, I reply. He then asks why the tank is silver when the insurance papers state the bike is orange. Well I painted it a couple of months ago. Another $118 violation. What an asshole.

Tax collectors.

^^^^^^^^
This would of pissed me off to no end. 118 bucks because you painted your gas tank? That sucks man. :huh

You can legally drive to a police station, in MA at least.

We have a problem around here with fake Cops too.. The media and the Local Police agencies warns you to call 911 to verify, but hard to do on a Moto. I don't have one of them fancy Bluetooth setups, and even if I did, I don't know if I could hear it over the wind noise. That and having to talk in a stressful situation, while riding and possibly evading. Driving or riding to a Police Station is a good idea if you know where one is. A few years ago some Perp tried to pull over a young woman here in Southlake, TX (DFW suburb) he had some flashing lights of some sort, she called 911, the operator told her to keep driving and gave her directions to the Southlake Police station, while he followed her almost right up to the Police station with lights flashing, before he realized what happened but too late they caught him. IIRC it wasn't the first time he had done that either. Another time some fake cops pulled over some real cops (off duty) here in Dallas. There seems to be a lot of them around here.

And back to my original point, it's hard to keep a clear head in the moment. For most people the pulse rate goes up, your mind is racing and the natural reaction is to pull over as quickly as possible.

Even though that may be allowed by law, make a gestapo MSP follow you for a few miles to a police station before pulling over and let me know how many new assholes you get as he rips off expletives at the top of his lungs when he finally get to tear in to you.

Guy I used to work with did not show up one day. Turned out he was doing the fake cop thing. Did not go well for him. Then when he got out, he committed suicide.

Rod

Back in the bad old days before we paid attention to drinking and driving, my brother got pulled over by a cop at 2:00 AM and was clearly over the limit (1969, small Louisiana town, everyone knew each other) for weaving to the side of the road where my other brother was pushing his Triumph 1968 Trophy 500 home after running out of gas.

the cop made them promise not to put tjhe drunk brother back behind the wheel and let them go with a warning. they went to get gas and sure enough, the drunk one did not drive the car home. . . . he rode the bike home so as to not be a liar.

Lee

I don't pull over for "unmarked" cars. I will keep going until a marked vehicle appears. Which usually happens quickly.

The one time I was lit up by an un-marked car I did not pull over either. I dialed 911 (I was in my truck) and told them I was being lit up by an unmarked car and where I was and I wanted to verify that this car was actually a LEO before I stopped. Took them several minutes as the dispatcher I reached via 911 was not with the dept lighting me up. But they did verify it was indeed a LEO. I asked them to stay on the line to explain to the LEO that I wasn't trying to run or such silliness. I pulled over and cop started yelling about me not stopping sooner. I handed him the phone and told him it was dispatch. He calmed down PDQ after that. It all worked out and I didn't even get a ticket, as the reason I was lit up was because my truck matched the description of a truck suspected of a store robbery.

Try that now days and you would probably be shot before you could hit the 9 key.

Where is this that they yell at possible robbery suspects for not stopping rather than getting them out of the vehicle at gunpoint?

Got a warning - somewhere around 75 in a 55

Yep, got one of those too in a small town, it was complete BS and the cop even told me so but said the mayor told them to "do something about it". I got out of it by going into court with a newspaper clipping of a house for rent off of a side street right there and told the judge I was looking for the address and didn't know where it was.

Also complete bullshit.