From the Archives - My Day in Court!

Introduction

I recently described in these pages, in another “From the Archives” post, how I was busted by a cop for a bicycle infraction back in 1990. (If you missed it, you can catch up here.) Here’s the rest of the story: how I fought the ticket in court.

My day in Traffic Court — September 21, 1990

I used to be a morning person, back when I had a paper route. Not anymore, man … now 6 a.m. feels really harsh. I struggle to keep my eyes open as my roommate, a do-it-all grad student, chats merrily away. His words reach me through a thick haze. I’d still be blissfully asleep, except a dickhead cop gave me a ticket for a bicycle infraction last month and I have to go to court. The slip he handed me had a court date on it, but he said I’d get something in the mail giving me the option to just pay it. He didn’t know how much the ticket was for, and I still don’t … I never got anything in the mail. I’d probably be fighting this anyway, though. That’s just how I am.

The problem is, I have to go to court out near where I broke the law, which means Walnut Creek. I’m not about to bike all the way out there in street clothes so I have to take Bart, which sucks because I don’t exactly have that system dialed. And since they won’t let me bring my bike on Bart (this being the commute hour), I have to walk all the way from the station to the courthouse. And since I have to be there at 8, my morning is starting ungodly early.

Once I get there, I’ll have to be pleasant and obsequious, so I’ve decided to dress presentably. I put on khakis and this short-sleeve striped button-down Oxford shirt. I’m not saying this is a fashionable or even sharp-looking shirt; I suspect it’s actually a bit nerdy.  I bought it at Eaker’s years ago, which was probably the last time I ever went clothes shopping with my mom. I was in ninth grade, and spied one of my teachers in there. I pretended not to see her, and she returned the favor. I’m not sure but I think I’ve seen people smirk at me when I wear this shirt. (Of course, there’s a hundred other reasons people might smirk at me.) 

Naturally, being polite and deferential will just be a pose. Inwardly, I’m bristling at this ticket and at the law in general. So, to get myself in the proper frame of mind (i.e., defiantly assertive), as I scarf a bowl of corn flakes I listen to “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” by Public Enemy:

I got a letter from the government
The other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted me for their army or whatever
Picture me givin’ a damn, I said never
Here is a land that never gave a damn
About a brother like me and myself
Because they never did
I wasn’t wit’ it, but just that very minute it
Occurred to me
The suckers had authority

It’s a great song, but doesn’t actually fit my situation very well. The military never asked me to serve, and I have no reason to suspect the government doesn’t care about me. That’s the problem with rap music: as much as I love it, it always reminds me how privileged and square and white I am. In my button-down Oxford shirt.

I get to the courtroom just before they start working their way through the docket. At registration I learn why I never got anything in the mail: the dickhead cop got my address wrong. Oh well! The fine is a whopping $81. At this news, I’m not actually that upset about the address screw-up. It’s totally worth fighting a fine this large, even though I might be here awhile. Could be ten minutes, thirty, or all day … it’s all down to luck.

The judge seems a lot cooler than the cop was. A 16-year-old kid who was busted for speeding, driving without a driver’s license, not having insurance, and driving with a cracked windshield is sentenced to a $500 fine and no license for two years. The judge asks him how he’ll raise the money, and the kid looks over at his mom. “Don’t look at her!” the judge snaps. Everybody laughs.

Next up is a young man busted for “exhibition of speed.” His defense: “Your honor, I was in a Ford Pinto.” The judge is not amused and gives the guy a good tongue-lashing about every car being dangerous when driven aggressively, etc. The guy loses his license, straight-up. Then there’s a college kid who ran a stop sign on his bike. His argument, amazingly enough, is that he doesn’t think a biker should have to obey all the same rules as a motorist. What a dip. The judge holds firm and says, “Now look here. My daughter just got her learner’s permit. You be more careful out there on your bike!”

I’ve worked a bit harder on my own defense. This isn’t the first time I’ve fought a bike ticket. The first time, my brother and I got popped for running a stop sign, but it was turning right onto a street that was closed down and had been barricaded off, for a bike race. My argument was that the cop wrote us up for doing 25 mph during the maneuver. I planned to say, “If the severity of the fine was based on the speed at which we supposedly did this, I have to question the officer’s estimate. Have you even tried to turn right at 25 mph on a bicycle while threading the needle between two barricades?” But in the event, I only got as far as, “My brother and I were riding to the San Luis Obispo criterium, and—” before the judge interrupted me: “Were you riding there to watch, or to compete?” I told him the latter, he reduced my fine to $20 on the spot, and I was done.

So I think as long as you have something to say besides “the law doesn’t apply to me” or “I was in a Ford Pinto,” you have a chance of getting the fine reduced. Today my argument is that the sign telling me to exit Highway 24 (which I’d failed to notice, hence my infraction) was in the wrong place. It’s close to a mile before the exit, which is great if you’re in a car doing 60, but not so much if you’re pedaling up the hill on a bike at under 10 mph. When my turn comes, I take the stand and the judge says, “I like your shirt.” Caught off-guard, I reply, “Um, excuse me, your honor?” He repeats, “I like your shirt.” I shrug and smile. “How about we lower this to $20?” he asks. Done! I’m going to hang on to this shirt. It’s like gold!

Standing in line to pay, I get to talking with a guy who just lost his license for a year for “minor in possession of alcohol.” I’d say most teenagers drink; this guy happened to get caught. He’s not that bent out of shape, though; in fact, he’s pretty mellow about it. “Yeah, I was sitting by the pool at my apartment complex drinking some beers,” he says, “and some neighbor lady called the cops. So they came out and busted me.” I ask how many beers. “A bunch,” he confesses, “but I wasn’t making any noise or anything, just drinking my beers.” Pretty crazy, huh? Dude’s not even driving a car when he gets busted, but the penalty is losing his license.

On my way walking back to Bart, the guy catches up to me and we talk some more. He’d been pulled over several times, and with the exception of the time he’d tried to outrun the police, they’d usually let him go because he was a Marine. “Put up with fifteen minutes of the cop recalling his glory days in the Corps,” he tells me, “and you’re off the hook.” He had some other alcohol‑related busts, though, so he was relegated from the Marines to the Army.

I ask him if he’s worried about the Kuwait situation, and he replies, “No, not really.” I ask if he thinks they might send him over to Desert Storm. “Yeah, I’m going in a week and a half,” he says. “That’s why I don’t really care about losing my license.” He says it like he’s going off to be a counselor at a day camp or something. But I guess that’s how it goes; he’s in the Army and fighting overseas is his job. Of course I ponder the paradox: he’s too young to legally drink beer, and has been deemed too irresponsible to drive a car, but he’s considered plenty ready to go kill people.

Our school paper recently interviewed some student ROTC reserves who are outraged about actually being called up to serve. In light of that flap, this guy’s attitude seems kind of refreshing. I can’t tell if his willingness is out of respect for authority—which would be ironic for someone who’s been in so much trouble—or because his friends are already there (which he did mention).

He gets my address and tells me he’ll write me about what it’s like on the front. I kind of doubt he actually will—I mean, doesn’t he have more important people, like family members, to write to?—but imagine if he did! That would make this $20 seem like a real bargain…

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Tax Day

Every year at tax time, and of course at other times as well, we hear about simplifications to the tax code. I’ve generally assumed these were a ruse for the rich (damn them) to pass more of the tax burden on to the likes of me, and I’m all for adding a few new line items if I can save a bit of money. But this year I finally came around and have thought of several improvements to the code.

Software

The software should be free, and it should be made by the WordPerfect folks in Orem, Utah, who wrote the last software of any kind that actually worked. Tech support should be live, and free. I had a problem with my Intuit product this year, and was astonished, and then immediately thereafter totally resigned, to learn that their tech support is e-mail only and has a 48-hour turnaround, which is absurd for a) any Californian (state motto: “we don’t have time for this crap”), and b) anybody waiting until the last minute to do his taxes (i.e., everybody). My e-mail to Intuit included the sentence “I am livid,” which is usually a sign that a company has earned a lifetime boycott by me.

To describe how the IRS software free tech support should work, I’ll cite a real-life example: my own phone call the other day to Electrodyne, makers of a modem line tap I occasionally use at work. To give you an idea how outdated this instrument is, the “high speed” version goes all the way up to 2400 baud. (Note to Homeland Security blog eavesdroppers: a modem line tap isn’t as sinister as it sounds. It’s no more dangerous than a TCP/IP sniffer. Now go look up “sniffer” on Wikipedia and stop bothering me.) I went to the manufacturer’s website because I feared I had the wrong power supply for my instrument, and within moments found a toll-free number listed. A guy picked up on the first ring, and he sounded like just the kind of crusty old veteran who could be of great help, which he was. “I’ve got a 2400A modem line tap and I need to know the current for its power supply,” I said. He didn’t even take time to scratch his head. “That will run about 800, 900 milliamperes,” he said. (You think Microsoft is that savvy? Huh. Their spell-check dictionary doesn’t even have “milliamperes.”) I told him what I had (700 milliamps), and he asked the voltage. He said I’d be fine. Done. IRS: take note. This is called customer service.

SASE

Unfortunately, on the day I finished my taxes, which was not coincidentally April 15, I’d had a hard workday, squinting at my modem line tap output on another venerable device, the Navtel datascope. The Navtel is more reliable than, say, a modern Blackberry, which due to an inscrutable user interface did a unilateral spell-check substitution recently such that I accidentally e-mailed a colleague to ask, “Do you still have a navel?” Fortunately, she was cool about it.

The Navtel’s screen is small and blurry to begin with, and the data on it very hard to decipher. I’ve added some extra blur to this picture to show you how it looked to me by 4:30 p.m., and because there could be sensitive data on there. (Note to Homeland Security blog auditors: see? Totally illegible. Now go bother somebody else.)

So anyway, I was already mentally fried when I went to finish of my last-minute tax effort. I managed to pull everything together, only to not have any luck finding an envelope. I looked everywhere, becoming increasingly annoyed. I finally decided to stop at Safeway on the way to the copy shop and get some COM10s there. Why was I even having to do this? The IRS should send us self-addressed stamped envelopes, and serve refreshments. My sense that this should be so only increased when I got to Safeway and discovered they don’t even sell envelopes. You can buy a three-hole punch there, and thirty different kinds of toothbrush, and chemical products for the home that probably shouldn’t be allowed to exist, but no envelopes. I’m this close to boycotting them for life.

Copy Shop Fee Holiday

On April 15, the government should subsidize tax return photocopying at copy shops nationwide. This would reward good corporate citizens like me who don’t do their personal photocopying at work. Now, I know it seems petty, me complaining about the $1.96 I spent on two envelopes and fifteen photocopies, but it’s not about the money. It’s about the time. I went to a small family-run copy shop, and they couldn’t make change from my twenty. (I’m not quite shameless enough to put $1.96 on my Visa card.) The register drawer didn’t have any fives or tens, and neither did the cashier. The owner, or maybe it was her dad, didn’t either. The manager, or maybe her uncle, finally dug out his wallet and produced the missing bills, and I was out of there in under ten minutes. But just under.

Coordinated Government Websites

Okay, the IRS is a government entity, as is the US Postal Service, and they work hand-in-hand to supply tax forms and accept completed returns. Why don’t their websites support each other? The first thing you see on either website around tax time should be a field where you type in your zip code (which surely usps.gov knows all about), so the website can tell you the hours, on April 15, of your local post office, and the location of the nearest post office that’s open late. I thought about rewriting the tax code such that every post office in America is open late, but that might bankrupt this country since every town in America, including Oscuro, Colorado (population zero), has a post office. Anyway, I wasn't exactly in a rush to get to the post office, figuring it would be open late, this being Tax Day and all.

I showed up at my local post office branch at exactly 5:01 p.m. Imagine my delight when I was greeting by a uniformed postal employee at the door. Coffee, sir? Doughnut? Now imagine my crushing disappointment when I learned that he was standing there simply to bar me from entering. He told me they were closed. I said I just had two envelopes to drop off and could he please, please take me in? His reply? “Sorry, we can’t. There’s only one guy working back there.” I almost pointed out that there would actually be two guys working back there, if he’d simply lock the door behind me and report to his post, but I’ve learned never to try to reason with government employees, at least the kind who interface with the unwashed masses like me. At least I got him to tell me where the closest post office was that would still be open.

Dammit to Hell

So that is how I spent an hour and a half driving around the tangled headphone cord of highways that tie Albany and Berkeley to Oakland, and within the screwy yarn-ball of Oakland itself. Of course I got lost, totally lost. I’m hopeless to begin with, even when I haven’t spent a day staring at network protocol violations and have had my anger turned up to 11 by a postal employee. While I drove I had to listen to a radio report about how Obama has vowed to simplify our tax code. I hope he reads this blog.

When I finally reached the post office I didn’t even see it, because it was just too huge for me to make out, like an ant trying to identify an elephant from an inch away. I blew right by, as I only eventually discovered. When I got to the port of Oakland and the giant cranes that inspired the Imperial Walkers in “The Empire Strikes Back,” I turn around and headed back. (Otherwise I’d have ended up in the Pacific Ocean.) On the return trip I spotted the post office by the protesters out front, whom I considered running over with my car. How idiotic is it to protest taxation, when your audience is here to get tax dollars back?

I suppose if I were really clever I’d recommend a tax code enhancement that would keep me from getting lost, but I’m not that clever, and it’s been a long day.

Refreshments and Entertainment

Tax Day could be a really fun experience for Americans, almost like Cinco de Mayo or Carnaval, if the government made a little extra effort to liven up the post offices where so many Americans drop off their tax returns. At first I thought this was what they’d done, as a nice spread of coffee and pastries was set out on card tables, but this was only for the extra employees they’d hired to stand alongside the road and accept envelopes from passing motorists. (Yes, California is the king of the drive-thru.) Standing in the long line, I wished for something to break the ice among all the taxpayers. Music? A live band? The Las Vegas airport has a nice take on the boring security checkpoint video: they made their own, with real, famous actors and Vegas performers, some in silly costumes. The IRS and the Post Office could team up and make this American Tax Day institution more like a happy hour.

The highlight of my wait was when a woman came and asked if this was the line for dropping off tax returns. During my snottier teen and college years, I’d have been tempted to deliver some witty and rude comeback designed to convey what I’d have felt was the stupidity of her question. Instead, I basked in the realization that I’m not actually the most hapless person on the planet. This more modern reaction is called wisdom.

There was actually one other guy there who was less savvy than I. He was wandering around asking people in line for the address to mail his tax return to. (See “SASE” above.)