Road Trip!
I don’t usually have to wait that long if I’m looking for a reason to bitch about police or law enforcement in general, and thankfully the same goes for praising their efforts to keep us safe, but at times I’m more disgusted by their actions than I am pleased by their accomplishments. I spent today driving up to Denton where my mother received a speeding ticket a week or so ago to see what the speed limit is there, the ticket stated the limit was 60mph but I know that stretch of highway and I know it’s more than that.

I confirmed today that the posted speed limit for more than 14 miles, about 5 before and 9 after where she was ticketed, is 65mph. She was stopped for doing 73 in 60 while passing an 18-wheeler on a two-lane stretch of I-35W just south of the Texas Motor Speedway. We’re trying to fight the ticket on the grounds that the address the officer put down is nowhere close to where she was stopped and that he had her going 13mph over instead of the 8mph she was actually speeding by. The officer also said she was in Denton county at that point, and the county line is another 5 miles north.

It takes me back to when I was 18 and driving home from work, I had those little blue lights for my windshield washer fluid spouts on my hood and a cop stopped me for them. This guy first asked me if I had been drinking, I remember well my answer, “Yep!” as I picked up my bottle of Sprite to show him what I had been drinking. He wrote me a ticket even though I was already on my street citing the lights as “equipment not approved”. Apparently a blue light is illegal from the front of a non-emergency vehicle.

Well it turned out later, as I tried to tell the cop, a red light cannot be showing to the front and a blue light cannot be showing to the rear as they each signify an emergency vehicle. But this guy had such a problem with me that he even argued with me about where the police station was, and he was wrong! I always believe that police need to be aware of everything around them and need to listen carefully to what people tell them, yet he didn’t understand that I was asking him where the police station was and not the court house, even though I specifically told him that I wasn’t talking about the court house.

He was just a young punk with a badge and a gun and too much power for his brain to successfully handle at one time. It’s a shame because I had respect for cops before that, hell a few months before that when I got my first speeding ticket I was even happy to see the cop, of course he seemed capable of being a police officer rather than the clown this other guy ended up being. Then again, I wasn’t much better since I paid the ticket before I thought too hard about fighting it, should’ve been myself and I would’ve been $100 richer that month.

Just a reminder to everyone that you should always question authority, even if you must keep it to yourself you should never let yourself be spoon-fed a load of horseshit. Think about it.