Have you ever broken the law?

[Skittler]

Got arrested for getting into a fight once (only spent 4 hours at the jail until they let me go) and got a seat belt ticket and a speeding ticket before.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

I got a paraphernalia ticket once when my roommate had a warrant out, and the dumbass left his bong right on the living room coffee table. I told the police that it wasn't mine, that I hadn't partaken in that particular habit since high school, and would take a drug test to that effect, but since I was the only one home at the time, he basically said he had to write me the ticket, and my roommate would have to confirm that it was his to get the ticket dropped. Of course he never did that. I wasn't even all that upset about the fine. It was a few years later though I had a great job in the bag. They basically told me I could come in and start the second my background check went through HR. I had completely forgotten about the ticket until they called me and said that it looked like I had deliberately not disclosed the ticket on my application, and didn't get the job. It was really infuriating. Heads up all: if you're in the job market always make sure you've got a copy of your current record on hand, and write everything on there on your application. Basically err on the side of caution.

[folk]

Once, I got a fine for entering the train without ticket, two ex-STASI officers from the cold war era enforced the law and took from me thousands of Czechia's money with STASI tactics... was about 50 euros

[Thatguy]

Speeding of course. But I grew up and stopped after my last fine many many years ago. I had the wife and two kids in the car and I had to get out and endure a dressing down by a policeman not quite young enough to be my son but certainly young enough to be an annoying kid brother.

In my defence I hadn't seen the sign for the drop in speed and that is why I was 20 km/h over the limit. That is no excuse of course and I said nothing and meekly submitted.

[AlSymerz]

You got out of the car? I haven't been asked out of a vehicle since the 80's when the cops used to do the walk the line sobriety test. I also haven't had a road fine in over 20 years.

However I break the law pretty much every day. The revolving light on the tractor keeps falling off so these days I don't even bother connecting it when I'm on the road. I'm also technically not supposed to carry four round bails on the forks while on the road but I do most days during winter. The light is a $135 fine and the overloading is about $500 but the local cops don't ask questions.

Despite any other laws I might have broken I've never spent time in a cell with the door locked. I did spend one night in a cell sleeping off a gut full of booze and who knows what else but the cop never locked us in.

[Dead1]

Drink driving - Got caught once but not charged (same happened to my best mate and my brother - cops are lenient).  

Got caught drinking in public - cops just made me empty my goon (boxed wine) into the gutter.

Driving from scene of accident - yep, got charged and ended up in court and was fined.

Underage drinking - cops didn't care as they were too busy with some guy who had been bashed and then pushed through a glass door (no, we didn't do the bashing).

Vandalism - graffiti but it was basketball courts so I figure it was fine.

Traffic offenses - eg illegal turns or minor speeding.  Copped fines for these.

 

Have witnessed many crimes - drug deals, bashings, spousal abuse (my flatmates), shoplifting, vandalism but those were never caught by police. so don't count.

 

Suffice to say I would say crime is endemic and the police only get involved in maybe 1-2% of all crime committed.

 

Here in Tassie the cops don't really care either - I've called them when my neighbours were threatening to shoot each other and they didn't care.  In one instance they took a woman whose husband threatened to kill her back to her husband where upon he shot her and then himself.  In a recent case they did a welfare check on some old woman, found her malnourished, didn't do anything about it and she had died from starvation by the time of the next welfare check.

 

And as mentioned myself, my brother and and my best friend were all let go for drink driving.  My mate was especially fascinating as he'd been drinking including spirit since 11 am and was busted about 1 am and was barely capable of walking.

 

The cops here are just after easy work.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

6 hours ago, Dead1 said:

Drink driving - Got caught once but not charged (same happened to my best mate and my brother - cops are lenient).  

Got caught drinking in public - cops just made me empty my goon (boxed wine) into the gutter.

Driving from scene of accident - yep, got charged and ended up in court and was fined.

Underage drinking - cops didn't care as they were too busy with some guy who had been bashed and then pushed through a glass door (no, we didn't do the bashing).

Vandalism - graffiti but it was basketball courts so I figure it was fine.

Traffic offenses - eg illegal turns or minor speeding.  Copped fines for these.

 

Have witnessed many crimes - drug deals, bashings, spousal abuse (my flatmates), shoplifting, vandalism but those were never caught by police. so don't count.

 

Suffice to say I would say crime is endemic and the police only get involved in maybe 1-2% of all crime committed.

 

Here in Tassie the cops don't really care either - I've called them when my neighbours were threatening to shoot each other and they didn't care.  In one instance they took a woman whose husband threatened to kill her back to her husband where upon he shot her and then himself.  In a recent case they did a welfare check on some old woman, found her malnourished, didn't do anything about it and she had died from starvation by the time of the next welfare check.

 

And as mentioned myself, my brother and and my best friend were all let go for drink driving.  My mate was especially fascinating as he'd been drinking including spirit since 11 am and was busted about 1 am and was barely capable of walking.

 

The cops here are just after easy work.

I find that with most police I've dealt with, a little civility goes a long way. They'll be absolute jerks if you give them a reason though.

 

Not a story about me breaking the law personally, but dealing with police: I was working a shift at a store just off the main road into the city I lived in and this very attractive young woman came up to me seeing my uniform and furtively whispered "Hey. I was in the library in [capitol of a neighboring state], and I was taken. This is the first time he's let me out to use the bathroom. I'm going to lock the door after I go in. Please call the cops and don't let anyone in there until they're here."

I nodded, pointed to the bathroom, and said "best use the latch to lock it so it'll only open from the inside." I called the police and relayed the info to them. They were quick getting to us since this was a pretty serious situation. They talked to the guy who had been driving her for about twenty minutes, then came in and basically took her in so she could make a statement. They let the guy just drive off, though, which I thought was strange. I knew one of the cops who showed up happened to be a regular who stopped in every morning to get his coffee so of course I had to ask him about it the next day. He rolled his eyes and audibly grunted in frustration. He told me "That lady wasn't kidnapped at all. They had met each other on an online s and m community website and arranged to meet up for real life and go back to his place for the weekend. 

When she told you she'd been kidnapped it was appearantly because she suddenly got really frightened that her *ahem BOYFRIEND was going to find out. And of course he's the only one she could call to come pick her up. She's still at the station waiting for him to get there."

And apparently she told the police all of this like it was just routine for her. I kind of understand why police become irate if their time is being wasted. What the hell lady?

[AlSymerz]

12 minutes ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

I find that with most police I've dealt with, a little civility goes a long way. They'll be absolute jerks if you give them a reason though.

We call that the Arsehole Test. Act like an arsehole expect to get treated like an arsehole.

[Dead1]

Wow that story is crazy.  Yes there's some timewasters out there.

We even get them in mental health - people who know how to pass the test to get into a psych ward despite being nominally healthy.  Yep, some people do want to go into psych wards cause it's three square meals a day and you don't have to look after yourself or make decisions.

35 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

We call that the Arsehole Test. Act like an arsehole expect to get treated like an arsehole.

Most of the local cops are arseholes.  My wife deals with them all the time as part of her work.  Quite a few don't believe domestic violence is an actual crime - "y'know that bloke is an awesome guy,  Good footballer too.  His wife is just making this shit up about him beating her because she's a major bitch."

But then my wife's had clients whose abusive partners were cops.  In one case both the victim and the perpetrator were cops.

My own dealings with them show them to be unprofessional eg letting me off for drink driving when I had drank a dozen beers and could barely walk straight let alone drive a car.

[RelentlessOblivion]

I’ve never had a positive interaction with police.I’d rather not go into detail but been told domestic violence ‘isn’t a real crime’. Also had one say she’d write me up for jaywalking next time she saw me set one foot outside the painted lines because ‘blind people have no business being out alone’. Asking for her details she said ‘I don’t need to give you anything if I think you’ll report me. Quite literally my only interactions with ‘law enforcement’.

[BLAMO]

I had to go to the court because of jaywalking when I was still in high school and the judge said he doesn't have time for this kind of things and said I can leave. I had my drivers license taken away because I was drunk when driving. I had to move a car for morning deliveries and I wanted to move the car 50 meters away. As soon as I started a car the cops knocked on the window and told me to exit the vehicle. I didn't even feel drunk but I drank double whiskey just before sitting in a car.

Got finned a bit of money and had to attend some seminars where we mostly discussed how to drink and avoid cops.

I don't drink and drive since. 

 

[Dead1]

13 hours ago, BLAMO said:

I had to go to the court because of jaywalking when I was still in high school and the judge said he doesn't have time for this kind of things and said I can leave.

 

I didn't think jaywalking was an actual crime!  That must have been one bored cop.

[AlSymerz]

When we were teenagers we had a crossing lady that would threaten to fine us for jaywalking next to the school crossing.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

Back during some of New York's most crime ridden years Guilliani pushed to have several law enforcement standards and some new laws aimed at reducing organized criminal activity pushed through. They did this by strictly redoubling enforcement of minor crimes that previously would have, at best, merited a ticket and small fine. The idea in practice was that rigorous enforcement at the lowest level of misdemeanor, and strongly supporting officers who would use these low level crimes as a flimsy justification for "stop and search" procedures on a level that bordered on micro-management of the law would eventually lead up the criminal ladder to the larger organized targets. One of these low level crimes that arguably garnered the most media attention was jaywalking. It's important to note here that this actually worked and crime levels in New York dropped precipitously, and also that these policies were the result of public demand. New York was going to elect a law and order mayor regardless of who was set up to take the reins.

 

Trouble is that it's incredibly difficult to relax standards back down to sane levels once they've been put in place even after the conditions by which that power was initially seized have been mitigated. You can't unring that bell, and given how successful it proved to be in New York, it was only a matter of time before other areas of the country began to implement similar policies, sometimes openly stating that the incentive for such was profit based.

 

I remember being mildly irritated with a kid I knew in college who described to me how a five-hundred yard stretch of highway that technically falls under the property of the small Wisconsin town he was from deliberately lowered their speed limit by ten miles per hour less than was standard for highway on the rest of the state. There's kind of an unspoken rule in the US that 5 to 10 over or under the speed limit isn't generally worth pulling someone over in the first place, but this kid seemed very proud of the fact that his town was able to generate revenue by being sticklers for even one mph over their arbitrary limit. There really are too many people out there who take a very anal retentive Javert-like 'a crime is a crime' kind of attitude, where none is needed.

[Dead1]

I've read about New York pre-Giuliani's reforms and especially in late 1970s - early 1980s.  Place sounds like hell - endemic crime and lack of safety.  Subways and parks were off limits.  

The Goatmaster could probably tell us what it was really like.

 

I'm all for draconian laws for actual serious crime - rape, murder, child abuse, robbery, major drug dealing, corporate fraud.  But deliberately rejigging speed limits to catch people out should also be illegal!

[GoatmasterGeneral]

39 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

The Goatmaster could probably tell us what it was really like.

 

I really didn't spend too much time in the city as a kid in the 70's, I grew up 30 miles out in the LI suburbs. After I graduated high school in June '79 my friends and I used to take the hour long train ride into the city a lot on the weekends just for fun to go downtown and look at all the freaks and also we always liked to go see metal and punk bands play in the city clubs because the drinking age was only 18 back then so we were finally legal. CBGB matinees became a regular habit in the early 80's. I remember there were always a lot of homeless in the city in the 70's which we called "bums" back then. That was the main difference I've noticed between then and now, there are shelters now and they sweep the bums off the streets away from midtown and the train station and the tourist areas like the theatre district. That and back in the early 80's you'd get approached by literally dozens of people on the street all looking to sell you drugs. Smoke and coke and crack. And lots of prostitutes who'd inquire "you want a date?" But we were usually pretty broke so we just kept walking and they wouldn't fuck with us because we were generally in well lit commercial districts on the main avenues with other people around, not in the back alleys of the ghetto. I suppose we were vaguely aware in the backs of our minds there could be a potential for danger if wandering into the wrong park or the wrong neighborhood especially after dark, but it didn't take long to figure out which areas to stay away from and honestly being so young we thought it was 'cool' to tempt fate. We were so young and dumb at the time that we thought we were invincible, so I guess we just got lucky that nothing really seriously bad ever happened to us. There were a couple of very minor run-ins with cops where they chased us away when we were hanging out somewhere we clearly didn't belong, possibly high and usually drinking some beers out of paper bags and making too much noise. Being young and inebriated loudmouths we mouthed off to them sometimes but when they checked our ID's and saw we were white suburban youths from Long Island they would just tell us to go home and stay the fuck out of their city. I'm sure if we'd been black or Latino they would have been more inclined to break our balls and might have even taken us off to jail for our insolence. So white privilige saved our asses.

[Dead1]

That's pretty interesting stuff especially being offered drugs in the open!

[BLAMO]

6 hours ago, Dead1 said:

I didn't think jaywalking was an actual crime!  That must have been one bored cop.

If the crosswalk is less than 100 meters away you can get fined because of jaywalking and on my way to school there were two crosswalks around 150 meters apart and the path we usually took was right in the middle so it was easier for us just to run across. They stopped me twice. Once it was an older cop that went on to what kind of clothes I'm wearing etc and the second time a guy around 35 years that had a younger, cute, female apprentice so he just wanted to show me who is the sheriff in town

Cops in Slovenija are really nice and I think they are fair when you are being respectful to them but from time to time you get some frustrated idiot who wants to make his day ruining yours 

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

17 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 

I really didn't spend too much time in the city as a kid in the 70's, I grew up 30 miles out in the LI suburbs. After I graduated high school in June '79 my friends and I used to take the hour long train ride into the city a lot on the weekends just for fun to go downtown and look at all the freaks and also we always liked to go see metal and punk bands play in the city clubs because the drinking age was only 18 back then so we were finally legal. CBGB matinees became a regular habit in the early 80's. I remember there were always a lot of homeless in the city in the 70's which we called "bums" back then. That was the main difference I've noticed between then and now, there are shelters now and they sweep the bums off the streets away from midtown and the train station and the tourist areas like the theatre district. That and back in the early 80's you'd get approached by literally dozens of people on the street all looking to sell you drugs. Smoke and coke and crack. And lots of prostitutes who'd inquire "you want a date?" But we were usually pretty broke so we just kept walking and they wouldn't fuck with us because we were generally in well lit commercial districts on the main avenues with other people around, not in the back alleys of the ghetto. I suppose we were vaguely aware in the backs of our minds there could be a potential for danger if wandering into the wrong park or the wrong neighborhood especially after dark, but it didn't take long to figure out which areas to stay away from and honestly being so young we thought it was 'cool' to tempt fate. We were so young and dumb at the time that we thought we were invincible, so I guess we just got lucky that nothing really seriously bad ever happened to us. There were a couple of very minor run-ins with cops where they chased us away when we were hanging out somewhere we clearly didn't belong, possibly high and usually drinking some beers out of paper bags and making too much noise. Being young and inebriated loudmouths we mouthed off to them sometimes but when they checked our ID's and saw we were white suburban youths from Long Island they would just tell us to go home and stay the fuck out of their city. I'm sure if we'd been black or Latino they would have been more inclined to break our balls and might have even taken us off to jail for our insolence. So white privilige saved our asses.

For some reason, reading this I'm filled with an uncontrollable desire to rewatch The French Connection.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

For some reason, reading this I'm filled with an uncontrollable desire to rewatch The French Connection.

I used to drive by that part of 86th Street and up New Utrecht Avenue under the El there in Bensonhurst Brooklyn where they filmed the infamous chase scene all the time in my work related travels. Can't even remember the last time I watched that movie though, I was 10 when it came out. Sad that Gene Hackman is 93 and retired from acting now, he was one of the greats from the days when all the Hollywood movies didn't always have to be big budget nonsense about fucking superheros and dumb-ass shit like that.