What's the deal with motor vehicle violations?

If saying that you have no clue and giving you a reason why is an insult, then so is telling me that I only see black and white. I don't consider this to be an insult. I certainly gained more from the experience of representing client than I gave. How did you learn what you know about the law?

Lying does not seem like a good strategy, and if you were going ninety you probably don't want to convey to the policeman that you were not in control of your car.A policeman once stopped me for speeding. His first question was to ask me how fast I was going. I told him, that it appeared that he was about to tell me. He asked me again and I just waited. Then he told me what speed he measured and with what tool (turned out to be VASCAR). He was dead on, but I certainly did not confirm that. My speed was 68 in a 55 mph zone.I agree that you should not lie to the police. But you don't have to give up any information. If you were to remind the police that you understand that whatever you say can be used in a court of law, you probably won't have to explain any silence. Most likely you will just be given orders and an explanation.

Thanks for the info Mr. Pot.If you cannot deal with being called clueless, why not just demonstrate that you have a clue instead of claiming to be insulted.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Sure. And that's exactly what I was doing when I called things like not understanding that you don't have to answer police questions clueless. If you review the thread, you'll notice that you were the one who claimed to be insulted. What I did was point out that my comments were no more offensive than yours. That's one possible response. However given that you have yet to answer my repeated request to tell me where you get your impressions, while I have at least cited a source for mine might indicate that you have some explaining to do.My experience is that traffic court judges do not put up with excuses when deciding guilt or innocence. Sometimes they will listen to such things when evaluating the fine. I stand by my advice that taking such things up with the arresting officer is pointless. I asked you if things seemed to work out when you use your own approach, but you did not answer that either.

I don't believe we've discussed what punishment ought to result in this case. My personal opinion is that a four game suspension is silly. I've strictly stuck with a determination of deflate vs. not deflate. I don't believe there is a sliding scale for that.Unless you've got something accurate to say about my arguments in that thread, perhaps you ought to stick with the facts.

My point was only to introduce alternative measures to the one you suggested. I admit that I have not proved that the police methods are effective. The police claim that they need the ability to do Terry stops, and I don't think it is reasonable to dismiss the possibility that they are correct without some evidence.If you want to pursue the idea that such stops don't work, then some stats or other evidence ought to make its way into the discussion. Nobody actually said that you should not do this. And I am not defending police who behave as Bland's arresting officer did either. I am glad to hear that some police in NH know the difference between an irritated man and a dangerous one.In fact the closest thing I have seen to a disparagement on this topic is when you claimed that people who followed a logical course of action including standing on their fifth amendment rights did not deserve their rights.Edited by NoNukes, : replace no with know

I invite you to back up what I said in that thread and I will comment, otherwise I am not going to bother with the thread until something substantial happens with Brady and the NFL.

Wrong, Percy. What I advocate is primarily advice about preserving your rights at a subsequent trial, and about understanding that when you want to assert your rights, you should do so on your own terms.There is a time for loud, noisy, protests and even for civil disobedience. But that time probably isn't at a traffic stop.

I find this advice a bit over the top. What I am suggesting is that you don't take on the cops over situations that are settled law against you and that you don't go admitting a bunch of details to the police. The police can conduct a Terry stop if they have an articulated suspicion of criminal activity. So not getting out of a car when a policeman tells you to is not a great plan unless you are involved in a planned Rosa Parks type civil disobedience activity. Best to have witnesses set up and a video camera controlled by your side in place as well.I don't have any advice for what to do when the police put you in a choke hold.So you have to know the law when you decide to do or not do exactly what a policeman says. That means you don't have to give the police your ID if you are in a legal situation where the police don't have the right to ask you for an ID. You don't have to answer police questions about much of anything.Most importantly don't go around ridin' dirty.On the other hand, Percy tells us about doing things like resisting arrest vigorously because he has a kid in the car, when he could just tell the police about his kid. Apparently he learned that from this country's forefathers, or maybe Martin Luther King or Thoreau. Maybe from the Boston Tea Party. Not sure what was up with Sandra. I want to see an un-doctored video tape.

Really? Do you think it is unreasonable for a policeman to want to compare your face to your picture ID. Requesting that you remove your sunglasses sounds like an entirely reasonable request to make during a minor traffic stop.

I've never encountered a policeman writing a ticket based on anything except an eye witness report of himself or another policeman. Did we discuss that here? Did we discuss any situations that constituted entrapment? Did some policeman trick you into making an illegal turn? Sandra refused an order to get out of the car. Have you ever done that? Have you ever even received such an order? Has a policeman ever told you to shut your pie hole, and you responded by continuing to mouth off.Your make a mockery of the founding principles you claim to be upholding. What you do is mouth off to some degree and then pay your fines. If you want to really put a policeman in his place, go to court and press your case. Maybe you can set a legal precedent in your locality.

I will agree that the police can make an unreasonable requests. You just picked a bad example when you chose sunglasses. Don't make more out of it than that. It is not a matter of me not liking your example.And yes you can come up with silly requests that might be made, but what would be the point of those unless they were actually being used? So far, the cigarette is the most interesting example offered yet. It is on the fringe of acceptability, but a refusal is not suspicious at all. So why did things escalate?Let us say that you dont see any reason for removing the ball cap, but the policeman does see one? What ought to happen next? Maybe the policeman does not want to alert you to the reason? what happens when you refuse?,

While it is possible to be arrested for minor traffic violations, that is a very poor characterization of the Sandra's situation. The real problem is the citizen-police interaction during traffic stops. The policeman in this case unreasonably escalated the situation in ways that did not even remotely advance a legitimate law enforcement objective. That much is not in dispute between you and I.In fact I am guessing that an unedited video would make the police look even worse, but I have not seen that yet.Otherwise, your complaints about arrests for traffic violations has yet to be shown as anything but hypothetical. It is okay to still talk about that, but you should expect posters to point out that your hypothetical does not seem to fit Bland's case.

I am not going to label my opinions as opinions. But asking people to remove sunglasses during identification is neither bizarre nor is it difficult to understand. The policeman might want to see if your eyes suggest that you are under the influence. Are you really going to refuse to admit that those are reasons to ask someone to remove their sunglasses?At best your example was no good at being clearly abusive. In my opinion, the example was clearly bad. Use some imagination. If a policeman is setting you up, what can you do about it at a traffic stop? What happens if you are wrong and you've simply misinterpreted the situation? When is your fear justified?I don't know if your judgment process is good or bad, and I don't know of your personal aversion to risk level, so I cannot tell you how to maximize your rights so you look the most like your founding fathers without getting yourself into more trouble than you are comfortable with handing.What I can tell you is that the current state of the law puts a lot of discretion in the hands of police who make traffic stops. It does not take much more than suspicion to get to the point where an order to get out of the car is legally justified. For many people such orders are tripping points because they feel they are going to be arrested.In Sarah's case, I don't see the elements required for a Terry stop (which by the way is not an arrest), and i don't think she should have been ordered out of her car. I cannot recall right now whether Sandra declined a reasonably expressed order to get out of the car, and when the office became abusive. What would you have done when told to get out of the car if the policeman simply repeated his order without explanation?After having seen how Sarah was treated, what advice would you give your own daughter?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : add some clarification

Removing your glasses is no more a fifth amendment issue than is having your fingerprints taken. The two things are not related at all. Taking off your glasses is not considered testimonial. If you end up getting arrested, you might end up with your glasses off as well as your trousers. You may end up having a warrant issues and having your blood tested without your consent. Your glasses may be removed from your face. And yet the police still cannot require you to answer incriminating questions.I don't find any online consensus about not taking off your glasses. Yes I can find statements on the Internet suggesting that you don't have to take off your sunglasses. Almost all of them are accompanied by statements not to talk to police officers. I can also easily find statements saying that taking off your glasses is part of the identification process. But let's take this as a correct statement of law. How should you react given this knowledge. Are you prepared for an order to get out of the car so that the officer can conduct a pat down? Do you have the impression that not taking off your glasses is in the spirit of throwing tea into the harbor, but answering police questions is not?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.