What's the deal with motor vehicle violations?

Are they're any crimes that you can commit that you can not, technically, be arrested for?

Not sure why you put crimes in quotes, so I'll ignore that. You just explained that a motor vehicle offense is neither a misdemeanor nor a felony but is in a category by itself. Certainly a motor vehicle offense is not a crime, right? Yet one can apparently be arrested for it. Thus the category of things one can be arrested for apparently extends beyond crimes, since it includes motor vehicle offenses. Earlier you said, "A cop can simply arrest you for almost anything," which goes way beyond crimes, even to not liking your looks. You also said, "Being under arrest isn't a big deal, its a technicality." But it's not a technicality, and it is a big deal. Bland couldn't make bail and was in her third day of incarceration when she committed suicide. Something that is the beginning of the end of your life is not a technicality. He only told her to get out of the car when she refused to put out her cigarette. Seems to me, and it apparently seemed to Sandra, too, that he had begun a process of hassling her trying to get her to give him an excuse for escalating things beyond a mere traffic stop. But she became outraged and ended up taking the bait. Yeah, well, as I said, I'm dismayed and concerned. Pardon my naivet, but it should be possible to train our policemen well enough that they can hand out a ticket to someone who's upset about it without arresting them. I'm not demanding perfection, but the police across the country can't even get through a week without hitting the headlines. Of course, if you're right that they're really just "dirty rotten scoundrels" then we have to conclude that this has always been a problem and that it's only beginning to come to light now as more and more video cameras dot the landscape in the form of cell phones, security cameras and the like.--Percy

There are various definitions of the term 'crime' and I am not sure that an answer to the question as you have asked it would be helpful. One definition is that a crime is an offense against public law. Other definitions reserve the term crime for serious offenses for which the penalty can be imprisonment.Traffic offenses are sometimes called infractions which is supposed to mean that they have been decriminalized. But that is not true of all traffic offenses. And in fact, some traffic offenses are misdemeanors and some are felonies. DUI type of offenses are traffic offenses that can be misdemeanors and felonies. Depending on your jurisdiction reckless driving offenses are misdemeanors, and driving at 90 mph in a 70 mph zone may constitute reckless driving in some jurisdictions. Virginia is an example of such a jurisdiction. I am told that in some counties in VA, jail time is routinely handed out for speeds in excess of 90 mph. I don't practice traffic law. VA does not put reckless driving on your criminal record.A fairly common but not universal setup is to charge speeding that is at least 20 mph above the speed limit and at least 70 or so mph as reckless. If you are not sure about your NH, I'd suggest that you check. I took a quick google for NH law, and it looks like their rules are fairly slack, but please don't take that as legal advice.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I used those quote to indicate that I meant the word literally.It is a crime, by definition, because it is punishable by the state. So it is an infraction.

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In every state, crimes are put into distinct categories. The categories are usually "felony," "misdemeanor," and "infraction."

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I think where this comes into play:

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Technically, a driver can get arrested in Texas for simply failing to use a turn signal.

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is that a cop can technically arrest you for an infraction in Texas. I'm under the impression that's par for the course.But it is not punishable by jail time, so there's really no reason to arrest you for it, and you can just pay the fine regardless, so they typically don't.But they could (on a technicality). I did think that "crime" (literally) was implied, just FYI. I wasn't totally sure that every single crime could be arrested for, though, so I said 'almost'.Anyways, if a cop doesn't like your looks, and decides to place you under arrest, then I'm under the impression that at that point it is a lawful order that you have to comply with (regardless of it being frivolous). If you think that's bullshit and start resisting that arrest, then that is a crime that is serious enough for them to start using force. That begins the snowball of escalation that they will not back down from. So it all depends on what you're arrested for, in how they're going to pursue it. And also how you are reacting to it. The actual arrest itself, though, is a legal technicality. Its just a procedure they follow. You can make it cost you your life depending on how you handle it, so yeah, in that regard it can become a big deal. The bail amount depends on the crime, and I'd bet that being charged with a failure to signal is going to be a lot cheaper than being charged for resisting arrest (along with whatever else they can throw on there).But the arrest, itself, is just part of the legal process, and in that sense it is just a technicality. I'm not trying to say that this cop wasn't a dick, and we both can understand not wanting cig smoke in your face, but when she said that she didn't have to put her cig out because she was in her car, I get why the response to that was "get out of the car". Yeah?I mean, you don't beat a dick by being a dick - especially when you know they can out dick you (seriously, they have weapons and armor). Yes, he was trained specifically on how to do exactly that.They seem to think that if there actually is an additional crime, then convicting that is more important than not fucking "the criminal" (scare quotes) over in the process of investigating the potential any-crime. That is what should cause you dismay and concern.Not the fact that "you can be arrested for a traffic ticket". I'll always pardon naivet. The difficulty is not in the technical aspects of "ticketing" and "arresting" (literally), it is in the approach and attitude of the police departments.They are training to trick us into revoking our rights so that they can stumble upon additional crimes that we may be committing, or even cause us to actually commit addtional crimes that they can subsequently charge us for.We don't need that. It is not easy for us to do anything about that. Therein lies the problem.There is another side to it, though. Municipalities do want a police presence. But fucking people over isn't cool.The Chief of Police is usually appointed by the Mayor, and the Chief is essentially in charge of employing the cops. So if the cops are dicks its hard for The People to affect that when it means electing a whole new mayor. That's why I favor the Sheriff system, it's more direct.So the cops are fucking people over more and more, as you touched on. Part of the problem is that some people already have contempt for the cops, and that starts the whole situation off on the wrong foot. You may very well be justified in your contempt, but you don't beat a dick by out dicking them - especially when you know they can out dick you (weapons and armor).Another part of the problem is ignorance of the legal technicalities. Yes, perhaps a cop can arrest you for an infraction. But the side of the road is not the place to have that discussion. If you simply accept the arrest for what it is, a technicality, and then proceed through the legal system and face the charge that you've been given, be it failure to signal or, hopefully not, resisting arrest, then you don't give them the ability to escalate the situation further. Yes. And underneath that is the increase in the militarization of the police force and their policies.We all know about suicide by cop, which is disgusting enough in itself, but there is also "swatting" now, where a kid got a really hefty sentence for getting a swat team to storm an acquaintance of his:http://nationalreport.net/...-old-swatted-domestic-terrorismThat's a serious crime in my opinion, but that it is so easy to commit is what bothers me.

I'm not certain about that. But I don't even believe the question is relevant. This person was not arrested for failing to signal. That simply caused the policeman to stop the person. I don't believe there is any offense to trivial for a policeman to stop you and ask for ID, try to smell your breath, and try to gauge whether you're on something.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You are not correct.Some motor vehicle violations are misdemeanors. And some might be felonies. From a quick search of the MN statutes, failing to stop for a school bus with its stop arm out can be a misdemeanor or gross misdemeanor (169.444); using a device to control a traffic signal without being authorized to do so is also a misdemeanor (169.06). Most other offenses seem to be classified as petty misdemeanors (169.89).Haven't looked for felonies, yet. Several years ago there was a story in the news that a young man had been arrested in the Twin Cities after being unable to prove he was insured. He was put in lockup and there beaten to death by his cellmates.When I was in highschool (college maybe?), I knew a guy who had gotten lost looking for someone's house. A cop was following him as he made three right turns in a row. The cop assumed he was trying to evade him, thought that might mean he was a violent criminal, pulled him over, drew his gun, and ordered him out of the car and to the ground.My father was pulled over for swerving and made to walk a line, touch his nose, etc. He wasn't drunk and got back in the car and drove along.At another time he was fined for not wearing his seat belt.My brother was put on probation for speeding with the punishment for being caught speeding within a year being five nights in the county jail. He decided not to speed.I have been pulled over for failing to signal, a dead headlight, and swerving. In most cases the cop was just making sure I wasn't intoxicated and looking for a quick excuse to check my record and see if he could make an arrest for a warrant or something of that sort. In all cases I cooperated, got a warning, and went on my way. I've also been cited for a violation involved in an accident (my appearance in court got one of the two citations dismissed).The police pull people over, and have a right to do so. Failing to signal could be a sign of driving under the influence, etc. Becoming argumentative makes things worse. A simple request by a police officer to put out a cigarette should be followed by the cigarette going out.Some people just don't know how to react to things and make inconvenient situations bad; make bad situations worse; and worse situations the worst. The police have to have some sort of authority or their job becomes impossible. That means if 'step out of the car' isn't followed by feet on the pavement they must escalate the situation by forcing compliance.And yes, most cops are just jerks. But if you get pulled over, do as asked, and don't make trouble (or have a record), then you can often be on your way; at the very least you don't typically end up beaten by the side of the road.Anyway, as my links above show, some motor vehicle violations are misdemeanors and pretty much all are petty misdemeanors.They aren't 'special crimes', at least not in Minnesota.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

That does help put things in perspective, but I'm more focused on the low end of motor vehicle violations. Take the hypothetical situation of a driver on his way home at night when his dashboard indicator for the right rear taillight comes on. He makes a mental note to replace the taillight, but a few miles later he is pulled over. The officer says, "Sir, your right rear taillight is out. You are under arrest. Please step out of the car."The officer is apparently operating within his legal authority to carry out this arrest, and this is what concerns me.I was about to click "Submit Reply" when I just remembered something that happened to me a decade or so back. I had a headlight that had gone out earlier that day and was pulled over. I hadn't been pulled over in years for having a light out, and on those occasions the officer just informed me that I had a light out and to have it fixed, but in this case the officer gave me a ticket (no fine, maybe it was just a warning, don't recall). I recall being incredulous, and I expressed it vocally and clearly. I wonder how close to the line did I step in expressing myself. (I found out later that I was woefully behind the times. Towns had begun handing out tickets for lights years before because then they can track it, and if you don't fix it and get a second ticket then they know.)Another occasion just occurred to me. This is decades and decades ago. Me and a girlfriend were driving around the boonies of central Mass around 1 AM when suddenly we were confronted by a maze of signs for an interstate. I'm driving real slow and we're both trying to read and understand all the signs and figure out how we stay on the back road and not get on the highway, but we nonetheless fail to notice some jug handle offshoot for the back road and end up at an intersection with our back road, but the signs say we can only go straight onto the interstate, no left turn. I turn left anyway and am pulled over. When the officer hands me the ticket he informs me that turning left at a "no left turn" sign is illegal, and of course I know that and feel I was only forced to do so to avoid being forced onto the interstate by their unintelligible signage, and I just snapped. I literally begin yelling at him, telling him that they know how confusing their signs are, and so they just lurk somewhere out of sight waiting for all the drivers who don't figure it out in time, that it has nothing to do with safety at one in the morning, that there's not another car in sight and hasn't been in the entire time we've been sitting here while he wrote this ticket, that he saw how slow we were going and knew we were confused by the signs. In other words, it was entrapment (the town didn't control the signage, the state probably did, but the town was taking full advantage of it), my reaction of outrage was (at least to me) fully understandable, but again, I wonder how close to the line I came.I don't want to draw the thread off-topic with these stories, so to reiterate my main point, if you're pulled over for some minor traffic offense, and assuming no non-motor vehicle offenses are involved (like an open container or drugs in plain sight), it should be next to impossible to get arrested, no matter how much irritation or outrage you show.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

You were not at all close.You have to be black or a latino or some other group despised by cops, before you are close.[/cynicism]

You've generalized it, but yes, this is what I'm dismayed and concerned about.If anything good is coming out of all these recent cases coming to light via video recording it's how obviously apparent it is becoming to nearly everyone that the front lines of law enforcement have feet of clay, and maybe this is the beginning of change. Yes, law enforcement is a difficult, dangerous and extremely important job, but while it somewhat explains the behavior, it doesn't justify it. Perhaps we should ask if it makes sense that those officers who one day are getting their adrenalin all pumped up as they respond to a "crime in progress with shots fired" should also be the same officers who the next day are pulling people over for taillights out. Do we really need guys with guns and tasers and handcuffs making traffic stops?--Percy

I've not encountered this. I doubt that most police departments would teach officers to do this because of the total waste of man power involved. I find your interactions with policeman complete bizarre. I would never do anything to prolong an interaction with a policeman who is giving me a warning or a ticket, and I would never offer an excuse that in a situation where I felt it would be ignored. Such excuses are simply potential evidence.Your point is that anyone should be able to blow their top during a traffic stop and you've provided examples of what you consider to be properly tolerant policemen.In many neighborhoods, stops for minor thins like a tail light are opportunities to investigate the driver. I don't see how dealing out verbal abuse is going to make such interactions go smoother. I also don't think it is realistic to expect the police to drop such policing methods as long as they are productive.

Isn't the record much more mixed than that (especially for minorities), to the point where calling it "productive" is easily arguable?AbE: I didn't verbally abuse the officers on either of the occasions I described. "You're taking improper advantage of your poor signage," even if expressed angrily and loudly, is not verbal abuse.--PercyEdited by Percy, : AbE.

Sorry for the second reply to this message, but a response to this occurred to me later: Hypothetical instructions to a department's traffic patrol staff: "We want this guy off the streets, so the unmarked cars should organize a tail, and if he so much as rolls through a stop sign, arrest him."Different hypothetical situation: A black man from New York City with rough looks, dreadlocks and a disdainful demeanor is pulled over for a taillight out in Georgia while smoking. The officer doesn't like his looks or attitude and arrests him.The concern isn't that officers will arrest people for minor traffic offenses. The concern is that they have the right. Give someone a right and they will use it. We're only now beginning to gain hard evidence of just how much questionable police behavior is out there. I don't think we should view Sandra Bland's arrest as a rare occurrence. It only made national headlines because she committed suicide. We never hear of all the similar arrests where nothing attention-getting happened.--Percy

I'm not sure it is character flaws so much as it is the training and protocols that the police departments push. Obviously, cops are not flawless people, but they do typically just follow procedures.I think that a perfect android following their procedures to the letter would still end up with a lot of the same problems that we have today.They are supposed to push for finding additional crimes in addition to the minor one that initiated the stop, according to their training. They do it in a way that causes people to "fight back" which itself is seen as a crime and is then pursued. Then people (rightfully) think they are being skrewed over, so they fight back even more, and that just escalates things towards violence.

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I turn left anyway and am pulled over. When the officer hands me the ticket he informs me that turning left at a "no left turn" sign is illegal, and of course I know that and feel I was only forced to do so to avoid being forced onto the interstate by their unintelligible signage, and I just snapped. I literally begin yelling at him, telling him that they know how confusing their signs are, and so they just lurk somewhere out of sight waiting for all the drivers who don't figure it out in time, that it has nothing to do with safety at one in the morning, that there's not another car in sight and hasn't been in the entire time we've been sitting here while he wrote this ticket, that he saw how slow we were going and knew we were confused by the signs. In other words, it was entrapment (the town didn't control the signage, the state probably did, but the town was taking full advantage of it), my reaction of outrage was (at least to me) fully understandable, but again, I wonder how close to the line I came.

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See, that's the exact wrong way to go about it. The side of the road is the wrong place to make your case, that should happen in court. You should never argue with the cop about the ticket, you argue with the judge.And that's a big part of the problems with violence with police that we have. People want to sit there and debate with the cop about how they shouldn't be getting a ticket. As things get heated, violence emerges. And the cops will never back down.You can prevent it, though, by simply accepting your ticket and not cooperating with any further investigation. "You giving me a ticket for speeding?, okay, thanks, have a nice day, am I free to go?""Where are you heading? Do you have any drugs in the car?""I've received my ticket for my infraction. Am I free to go?""Where are you coming from?""I don't see how that's relevant to the speed I was driving. I have my ticket, is this stop completed? Can I get going now?"Just take your ticket and get the hell out of there as soon as possible. You can fight the ticket later at the appropriate time and place. Hell, I'll one-up you: We don't even need guys patrolling around making sure that we're obeying all the traffic laws. Not that there aren't any traffic areas at all that would benefit from direct observance, though.But in general, they can be more like the fire department. Just sit around and wait for people to call you when they need you.We don't need people following us around waiting for us to slip up, so they can then try to trick us into revoking our rights and/or committing additional crimes.But police work is also lucrative, so we're boned. And The People can't do anything about it. The whole system is fucked.

To echo what you said earlier, cops are just people, and people have a conscience. I like to think that he heard what I said and gave some thought about the fairness of handing out tickets caused by confusing traffic signage.Or maybe, being completely familiar with the area he'd never taken a careful look at the signs, i.e., maybe he wasn't aware it was actually entrapment. Having never read what the signs actually said maybe he never realized that it wasn't possible for a person unfamiliar with the intersection to stay on the back road and avoid entering the interstate. And maybe once he realized this he would stop handing out tickets there, maybe even suggest they fix the signs. (I never happened to drive that road again, but checking Google Maps I see the intersection has been completely redesigned and reconstructed.)In other words, communication of information is important, and it could affect how the officer handled future traffic stops.I'm hearing the same message from you and NoNukes, that verbal interaction with officers of the law is to be kept to a minimum if one wants to avoid trouble. Call me naive (again), but at least in my own mind I don't live in a country where the police can intimidate me into silence.If in high school civics classes they taught that in interactions with police one must keep verbal interaction to a minimum and never express one's opinion or reveal how one is feeling, I think the objections would be pretty severe. I think the advice would more likely be to be polite and respectful, to answer all reasonable questions ("What's in your trunk?" is not a reasonable question), and to carry out all reasonable orders ("Get out of the car," is not a reasonable order, I don't believe. An officer following proper procedures I think has to inform you why he needs you to exit the vehicle, e.g., "I see papers on the front seat, I have reason to believe there are drugs in this vehicle, please exit the vehicle.")I just remembered another occasion. I was just arriving at my son's elementary school with my son in the car when I was pulled over by a town policeman (we had 3 at the time), and I stopped in the elementary school parking lot that I was just pulling into anyway. This guy was new, I didn't recognize him, but I knew why he pulled me over: I had an expired inspection sticker. But I also had a sheet of paper on my front seat giving me a two-week extension (parts had to be ordered). So I grabbed the piece of paper and walked over to the police car with it. And then, in an elementary school parking lot with buses and children and parents and teachers walking all over, he ordered me back to my vehicle. I said, "Sure," and returned to my vehicle. Meanwhile a couple teachers and parents walked up to his car window to say hello. He was blindly following a protocol that made no sense.AbE: Upon further reflection about the above about being pulled over in an elementary school parking lot, since from a law enforcement perspective any police/civilian interaction should be considered potentially dangerous, it must be part of police protocol to avoid pulling anyone over in a school zone. I would think that officers would be advised that they should instead wait until they're out of the school zone before turning on the lights.Abe 2: How I perhaps could have been arrested: When I walk up to the officer's vehicle, what if he had decided I represented a threat and tried to detain me and put me in the back of his vehicle. With my son still fastened in his car seat I would have objected. Strenuously. He would have had to take me by force.--PercyEdited by Percy, : AbE.Edited by Percy, : AbE 2.

It only made national headlines because she was black.You never heard of the death of Carl Moyle by his cellmate after being arrested and jailed without incident for driving without insurance. Carl Moyle was white.The arrest of Sandra Bland was far more justified than that of Carl Moyle. Bland took her own life by free choice; Carl Moyle was bludgeoned to death with a metal bar by a man held in jail while awaiting trial for attacking a fellow inmate in prison.The Carl Moyle incident is far more of a travesty of justice and a far more potent example of police abuse of power and failure to protect those they serve.There is simply no explanation for the difference in attention these cases got other than the skin color of the people involved.