Overzealous cop - Offence Obedience to Police

Fire fighters were called on my street in Chicago. A cop car blocked the street a few mns later to block incoming traffic. My wife showed up a few moments later and asked if she could park her car on the parking lot which is virtually the first lot on that street (less than 3 cars lengths) from where she was. The cop told her that she had to leave but forcing her to take the highway and not letting her circle back the block to go park elsewhere as she had a meeting in my office. All the while a few cars which were parked on the street were allowed to leave the street and making a left or a right as they pleased.
She asks him if she can make a left instead of the highway and he says "that's it, give me your licence"

Her gave her a Offence Obedience to Police officer which is ridiculous. I talked to him asking what was the problem, he only said that it was already written and that we can go to court and to "step away buddy".

Is a lawyer necessary? Or can we contest it ourselves?

 

I would go to court. I doubt he will show up and if he does, the story would sound silly to the judge, IMO. But that is just what I would do. It could still turn out bad where you have to pay the fine + court costs. Lawyer needed? I don't think so as it will be a he said she said situation.

 

We will go to court. That cop was out of line the way he was talking and behaving. I took pictures of where they were and where the parking lot is, of him allowing cars to leave wherever they want.

I understand he needed to block the street, but there was no need to be aggressive and take my wife's license when she was complying with his order to leave.

If i talked to him like that he wouldnt appreciate it.

 

What a joke-typical cop on a power trip.

I could understand him being busy and possibly even rude to get his point across--but if he was so busy - how does he have time to write a citation?

 

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. Unfortunately, you ran into an example that makes us look bad. Every occupation has them and unfortunately, you met one of ours.

 

"What a joke-typical cop on a power trip. "

Careful how You phrase that.

 

Here's my suggestion. It's a petty offense. Whether you feel the ticket was just or unjust, just pay the fine, request court supervision so it doesn't go on your wife's driver's history, and go on with your life. A traffic lawyer might be able to beat the ticket but will probably cost more than the fine. If he doesn't beat the case you just paid for the fine, an attorney, and additional court costs. In any case, you lose. My guess is that if the cop was anal enough to write that ticket for what you said went down, then he's probably not the type to blow off court.

If you do take it to trial, the 2 minutes the judge in Cook County will give to her case in court will run down like this (I'll cut out the routine non-sense that is always there)...

Police officer: I was blocking a street to assist the fire department. I told her to turn (insert where he told her to go). She refused to and attempted to argue with me, thereby causing more of a traffic back up.

The prosecutor will then ask your wife what her legal justification was for not following directions was.

"I wanted to turn around and go another way" or "I didn't want to go that way" or "I live right there" or "he was rude and unreasonable" are not affirmative defenses.

Probably her only defense would be to testify that she didn't understand his directions which is why she didn't immediately act.

In a nut shell, a police officer has the legal authority granted by the IL Vehicle Code to tell you where you have to go if he is directing traffic. If you don't do what he says right when he tells you to, you can get a ticket.

The law is the law, it has nothing to do with common sense, so try not to take it to heart.

 

A trip to court will be time consuming and not without expense borne by you and the P.D.(tax dollars of course)
Have you spoken with the cop's commander? I've gotta think cooler heads would prevail.
Good luck, lot's of nice homes in the suburbs you know.

 

Those tax $$ would be spent anyway. So, why not go? This isn't about minimizing damages, but to bring to public what was perceived to be a silly situation and over reaction by an officer. Yes, the conversation would go one way. But one gets to respond about how others were allowed to exit that way, etc....

IMO, a few $100 spent would do the officer good to know that he was over the top.

Now, we really haven't heard the officer's side, so I can't make any judgments there. Just like another thread here in the Chicago section of FChat about some maintenance issues, the other side's perspective may shed more light on the situation.

 

Don't know that I'd fall on my sword over this. It's not as if the "trial" would get any publicity or the cop really gives a damn.
An attorney would almost certainly sort it out in the OPs favor but likely with an agrrement made with the prosecutor and without testimony.
If a phone call couldn't get results it I'd pay the dough. If the cop has an ego problem I ain't gonna fix it.

 

Why not? Nothing is going to happen other than lose some $$. If you just pay, you lose AND the officer gets away with the behavior. The up side is that the officer needs to show up and present his position. If he is viewed by the court as writing frivolous citations, then that is a miss use of his authority. That is an actionable offense.

Badges2 may correct me here, but that is just MO.

 

I held my tongue when he posted it, but Andrew's post above is spot on. The days of the cop not showing up and the case getting tossed, in the suburbs anyway, are long over. We HAVE to attend court or at least be available to go in if working day shift.

Unfortunately, a lot of this is perception also. To the cop, she may have been the 20th person try to skate by him. Also, not to sound arrogant, but when you're directing traffic (especially in the city) you really can't stop and get chatty with someone. Even if they just have a question, when they stop, it messes everything up. To the lady involved, she just needed a moment of his time for a quick question. But as I said above, she was probably the 20th person with a "just one moment need". I try and be courteous to everyone and treat them with respect. My way of working is I treat everyone like I would want a member of my family treated. However, traffic control brings out the demon in me! You are standing in the middle of moving traffic, trying to get people coming at you in 2 tons of steel to do what you want with the wave of a hand. Most people don't even see you and the ones that do quite often will ignore you. The closest I've come to being hurt has always been doing traffic control.

As far as the courts, they don't really care about the tickets we write. If anything, this charge will probably upset the judge because the police, in a way, are an extension of him/her. If people crap on the police, just wait until you see the turd a judge can lay on them!! Judges do not like those that give police a hard time (for the most part).

If it were a member of my family, I would tell them to pay the ticket and move on. If the cop is a jag, his peers already know it and there is nothing anyone will do to change it.

 

How much money did you give to Rahm's mayoral race?

 

The judge will not allow you to stand up there and use the court to grandstand. It's not t.v. You will be asked something very close to the effect of "What was your legal justification for not following the officer's direction?" If you go on a tangent or fail to answer that question, you will be admonished by the judge as if you were a child (and people will quietly laugh at you). Argue with the judge or disregarding his instructions to directly answer the question because you want to talk about how you feel that the officer abused his power and was mean to you, you're probably going to be held in contempt of court. All over a petty offense. Of course, it rarely ever goes that far, but people are frequently warned (and it works as no one wants to go to a holding cell at the county jail to cool off and think about what they did over a petty offense which is only a $150 fine in this case).

Traffic court is very monotonous and predictable. There are only so many laws and so many situations that come up. There are specific real defenses that exist to traffic laws (actually all laws) and if you don't know them, you're going to be put through the wringer. That's why there are attorneys. Whatever reason you can think of in regard to why you shouldn't have gotten a ticket, someone else has tried to use it before and the judge is tired of hearing the same excuses after hundreds of trials that are almost exactly the same.

I'm sure most here have heard the old adage, that anyone who tries to defend himself in court of law has a fool for a client.

As the Supreme Court noted: "Even a skilled lawyer who represents himself is at a disadvantage in contested litigation. ...He is deprived of the judgment of an independent third party, in framing the theory of the case, evaluating alternative methods of presenting the evidence, cross-examining hostile witnesses, formulating closing arguments, and in making sure that reason, rather than emotion, dictates the proper tactical response to unforeseen developments in the courtroom."

The problem with the responses here hinge on the fact that feelings were hurt. The court has no feelings.

Once a ticket is written and forwarded to the court, the police can't (or shouldn't) be allowed to "take it back." That would allow for widespread corruption (even moreso than you may believe there is now). A traffic law was supposedly violated, a ticket was issued, it can be taken to trial and contested. IF it was unjustified AND you can prove it, you will (should) win. If a police commander had the power to negate criminal or traffic cases, it would circumvent the court system and we'd be in an even worse situation because the police commander would be acting as a judge.

How is the ticket "frivolous?" The officer is sworn in, taking an oath to the country, state, and city. That gives him the right to make the call to arrest someone (write tickets). The court tries the case and issues a verdict. Tickets are always issued at the officer's discretion. The fact that you may not agree with the issuance of a ticket does not make it frivolous.

And one last point, Assistant State's Attorneys (prosecutors in general) are frequently friends with most of the police officers as they work together often on the same side of proving the state's / city's case. Good luck having one open an official misconduct case (a felony) against an officer (their friend) for writing a ticket to some unknown person for not following directions.

I know this all might not be what people want to hear, but I'm trying to present this from a more realistic / objective point of view.

 

One last thing and then I'm done here...

Amenasce, I'm sure that you and your wife are wounderful people. I'm sure you are law-abiding citizens. And I'm pretty sure that's why getting a ticket for disobeying a police officer irks you. Mostly because you picture yourself as being on the same side of the justice system as the police. You may feel that this ticket puts you on opposite sides. Just so you know, the police issue lots of those tickets. It doesn't mean much, that's why it's a petty offense (it is not criminal in nature). It's just what the police do, they write tickets.

In short, if you want to contest the ticket, get a traffic lawyer. I just didn't want to see you get blindsided in court (and lose more faith in our system) if you attempted to contest the ticket yourself.

 

I never indicated that "grandstanding" was to be done.

You ask: "What was your legal justification for not following the officer's direction?"
My answer: He was letting others go out in the direction I asked to go. I asked once to go left and he issued me a ticket. That is unreasonable.

You ask: How is the ticket "frivolous?" The officer is sworn in, taking an oath to the country, state, and city. That gives him the right to make the call to arrest someone (write tickets). An officer that turns on his cruiser lights and pulls you over to just look at you Ferrari is an abuse of his power.

My answer to you: So all police never make an error? None abuse their power? Please re-read the first post. If the incident happened as described, the cop had a short fuse and overreacted (IMHO). May be we need to wait until he beats the crap out of someone in a bar before action is taken?

IMO we all need to challenge the system or we become subjects of that system and become sheeple that blindly follow orders. Can you think of things in the past where that was the excuse and society said "NO" not an excuse?

This is a little ticket and it is just MO that if one had the time and even if you lose, you can present the fact that the officer was out of line. The judge may still not do anything, but quite the contrary, some judges have gone against officers especially when presented with evidence. I have a personal story on that.

Stick a fork in me....I'm done.

 

But in this particular case, there is no evidence. It's a matter of two different opinions coming together and having a conflict. The issue the court would look at is one of the opinions has the legal right to do what was done and the other didn't. Case closed.

Andrew and myself aren't taking sides, we're just pointing out the system and how it will most likely go in this case. I personally would take my wife out for a great lunch or dinner on the court date and be happy you're not sitting in a courtroom for hours to be potentially POed.

Whew! Badges2 has left this thread..........

 

I'm a firm believer that everyone who works should put forth the effort and earn there wages, in this case you should have took off and had the cop jump in his squad and chase you, make him earn that Ticket.

"When The Lights Come On The Chase Is On"

Hey Neil wanna chase me across the country for S**** and Giggles?

Like Smokey and the Bandit





Frank

Your Friendly Neighborhood Ball buster

 

I'm with ya Frank! He can only chase one of us or catch the slower one!

 

Well since I drive a 4 door Honda civic chances are he'll catch me first, but he might run out of gas and be forced to pull over to fill up.

With a little luck he might see one of those doughnut displays inside and forget all about me



Frank

Your Friendly Neighborhood Ball buster

 

We went to court today. She pleaded not guilty. The cop was there. But after 1H, the judge dismissed everybody who had checked in at 10h. The cop didn't seem too pleased.

The judge seemed to be a good one, the last case, i heard him say "I am hearing two different versions of one story and dont have enough evidence to continue" so he let the defendant go eventhough 30 mns earlier he had told my wife and anybody else who didnt plead guilty that the court usually sides with the cop (Doesnt this border on illegality ??? How about fair trial??).

 

Statistics, that's all.

Well played.

 

Good for you & yours!

 

Lousy beef to begin with. Good on you and she for being present.

 

I'm glad to hear that the ticket was dismissed. The courtroom is no place for logic as you have just saw. To an extent, it's as much of a game of luck as going to a casino.