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At 22:50 on June 21, I drove at the intersection of Bleury and St. Catherine. It’s a one way street. There was a police wagon in front of mine, driving below 20 KM per hour without any siren. I followed them about 5seconds at very low speed and they are still very slow, in the middle of the road. I saw there were two female police officers in the car and they were talking. To remind them I was going to surpass, I blew my horn in a very short and polite way and then I drove my car to the right side of the police wagon. The police officer at the passenger side swang down her mirror and yelled at me “You must be very hurry!” What could I say? I was not very hurry but I do have a friend waiting for my pick-up at the airport and what I did is only to give them a signal so that we can avoid unexpected collision when I surpassed them since I knew they were very concentrated on their work. When I wanted to leave, the police officer stopped my car and asked me to show them my driver license, my vehicle registration paper and my insurance paper. I was fully cooperative even I was aware that they intended to give me a hard time only because they felt their privilege on the road was challenged from their assumption even my original intention is only to give them a signal of surpassing a police wagon which crossed the road lines, at a extreme low speed and with no siren at all. I issued them my drive license and vehicle registration paper. When I asked the police officer what I did wrong, she sat on her seat (she never left her seat) and yelled at me: “It’s because of your attitude. You didn’t show your respect! You are dealing with a police officer, not your wife”! When I asked them what’s wrong with my attitude, was I rude or did I use any coarse language and then explained to her I just gave them a signal, she replied:” you are not suppose to tell a police officer how to do her job!” It seems my guess is right. As a police officer, no matter they are working or not, no matter they crossed the line or not, no matter they were chatting or not, as a citizen, the only choice for you is only to follow them and have to be follow quietly. Otherwise, they will stop your car, check you everything until they pick some excuse to give you a ticket. After carefully checking my files, it is very obvious they cannot find anything wrong. But this cannot save their face. They have to do something to prove their power. Finally they issued me a ticket of 95$ since I didn’t sign on the vehicle registration paper although they have all of my IDs and check my signatures and pictures. When I asked the police officer “does this make you feel better?” she replied me with a threatening tone “do you want to have another ticket of not showing your insurance paper? It can be up to 950$!” (I was looking for my insurance paper at that moment.) What should I do now? To defend my dignity in the price of another fabricated accusation of 950$? Come on, give me a break…
The lessons I learned from this case are:
1. For some polices, defending their authority is much more important than defending justice.
2. Respect means to follow and to follow quietly.
3. You will get a ticket because of your “attitude”.
4. Ticket is negotiable. It will be 95$ if the police want to give you an easy time and up to 950$ if they want to give you a hard time. It’s according to their wish and mood!
It’s the whole story in that drizzly night. I decide to sue them not only because of that fabricated ticket but also I have to defend my basic rights and stop some police officers abusing using their authorities which they are entitle to. |
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