7 tips to outsmart cops when you get pulled over

boing
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Our daughter is 40, when she was in her 20s she got a reckless driving ticket, the description on the ticket said she changed two lanes while merging without using her signal.

She was in her 20s, had a decent job, paying her own bills, and not on my insurance.

I told her she should fight it but she needed to take responsibility no matter what the outcome.

She asked if I would go to court with her. When we got there I told her to find the cop and ask for a break, he was adamant that it was reckless driving.

I told her just to get up in front of the judge and tell him what happened and take your lumps.

But then we sat there as driver after driver had lawyers who got all the charges reduced except for one repeat offender.

I thought about it and decided to find the prosecutor. She’s willing to take responsibility and pay any fines and court cost but reckless driving would be very expensive. He looked at the description on the ticket, talked to my daughter and the cop. He felt impeding or illegal lane changed was appropriate.

The cop wouldn’t budge.

She got up in front of the judge and the prosecutor actually defended my daughter, the cop still wouldn’t budge from reckless driving.

The judge got mad and reduced the charges to something that only involved court costs.

So, talking to the prosecutor may be helpful, or not but I wouldn’t rule it out entirely.

But, clearly people who can afford lawyers are a lot better off.

I, on the other hand, never got a break and I had a lot of practice trying to get breaks. I had 17 points before I turned 18 and lost my license for a few months. Good times.

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This may be true legally…but when has the law ever mattered to a cop?

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In addition to all this… my personal method of never losing personally a moving violation case in court… (Won 3 times as a twenty something, and once at 45, once helped my mom beat a ticket, as well).

Do your best to make the stop as quick and unremarkable as possible, without admiting guilt or providing additional probable cause… (ie. Follow the instructions/suggestions in the article/comments here).

If you get a citation, once you drive away: at your earliest chance, pull over somewhere and take a few brief notes (written or audio) about the facts you would use to contest the ticket.

Many police will actually do the same about you, writing notes on the back of their copy of the ticket, which gets filed/kept…
especially if you seemed by speech or behavior, to indicate when given the ticket that you might contest it.

When you receive your court date, reschedule it a few times, to put as much time between the citation date and your court date. Make it very hard for the officer to recall anything except what’s written on the ticket.

Request a copy of the original ticket, and specify you want both the front, back and any additional notes the cop wrote. You have a right to this, and they will provide it. You see exactly what the cop wrote after your stop, which is almost exclusively what they will use in their testimony; and you can prepare to counter effectively.

Also, the cop knows you asked for this, and it seems many decide it’s not worth showing up to court against someone who’s well prepared.

If you can, attend a ½ hr of court ahead of your date; to see how it really goes down. It’s entertaining and eye opening to see how cops testify and the various gotchas.

At your court date, it seems like at least 1/3 of officers don’t show up; if so, your case is dismissed. I’m 5/5 using the above, all times cop was a no show.

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(excerpt) Police officers in California can no longer ask, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” [Assembly Bill] 2773 is intended to limit what are called “pretext stops” — when a police officer pulls a motorist over for a minor infraction, like a broken taillight — to be able to then search the vehicle for illegal items like drugs.

Black motorists across California are far more likely to be stopped by the police than their white counterparts, according to research by the nonprofit organization San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).

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They absolutely are. In fact, since the UK has three separate legal systems, it’s not even consistent across the UK.
Most notably, in England and Wales, You do not have a complete right to remain silent. Since 1994, in those countries, they are allowed to draw negative inferences from your silence. This dystopian little law is reflected in the police caution that you might hear being read out to suspects in media based in England or Wales:
“You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

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#1 should be “Don’t drink and drive”.

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#1 and #7 are not compatible in many circumstances.

#1 Don’t Admit to Wrongdoing
When asked, “Do you know why I pulled you over this evening?” Pelushi advises responding with a simple “No, sir.”

#7 Never Lie

You probably do know why you were pulled over.

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You can guess the answer to the question, but you really don’t know with any certainty why the cop made the decision to pull you over. Maybe you were going 5 MPH over the speed limit but you were pulled over because the officer saw that your rear license plate – unbeknownst to you – had fallen off. Maybe you were Driving While Black. Maybe it’s the end of the month and the officer needs to make her ticket quota. Maybe he’s having a bad day and pulls you over when he wouldn’t otherwise bother.

Whatever the reason, the cop does know. Which is why it’s a BS question to begin with.

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I got pulled over once and legitimately had no idea why. It turned out it was because I’m short. The trooper thought I was a kid on a joy ride.

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Just saw this judge having fun in another hearing. Seems he’s gained some notoriety.

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Problem is in some states just declining means they take away your license (I think this is for breathalyzer/blood only, not “walk a straight line.”) So the gamble is “do I take the test and hopefully pass, or do I refuse the test and get screwed anyway?”

Of course if you take the test and fail, not only do they take away your license, they make you go to six months of classes to school you on how bad drinking is, which you have to complete to get your license back. This seems to guarantee a certain number of drivers will take their chances with the test.

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