This past Saturday I was en route to my hockey game. The game was at 10:30PM which means I leave my house at 9:00PM. I go through two toll booths on the way to the rink. As I was approaching the second toll booth, I see a Texas State DPS trooper flip on his lights. Fuck! I immediately begin to slow down and pull over. At the time I was going around 75MPH, which is of course, in excess of the speed limit. The speed limit at the time was 60MPH.

I do not know if you have ever driven on a toll way in Texas, but people appear to assume that since they pay, they can drive any speed they want. The average overall speed of the normal flow of traffic is between 70MPH and 75MPH. If you do not go this speed, it can be dangerous. Sure, I understand that this does not mean that it is OK by any means to go more than 60MPH; I am simply stating a fact.

Anyway, so in typical fashion when dealing with law enforcement, my initial reaction is to freak out. This stems from when I was a young adult and may or may not always have been on the correct side of the law. Being a typical teenager and constantly being intoxicated in a vehicle almost every day or doing other unmentionable things sort of trains your mind into getting nervous around the "po po". Ok, so I take my seatbelt off, then I think, damn, now he will think I wasn’t wearing it, so I put it back on. Then I pop open my console to dig out my insurance. In the middle of doing that, I realize I also need my driver's license as well, so I shift gears and start looking for my DL. At this point to the cop, I figure I look like a meth head trying to stash my junk, so I just kinda sat there doing nothing until he walks up. I also should have turned on my dome light so he could clearly see the inside of my truck, but of course, I forgot to do that as well.

So he gets to the window, and I hand him my DL. He says the reason he stopped me is because I was entering a 45 mile an hour zone, and that the only reason I slowed down is because I saw him sitting there. This is problematic on both fronts. The express lane parts of the toll area are 60MPH zones. The side where you have to go through a booth or give money is 45MPH. So strike one, he was lying. I have a toll tag and was cruising through my 60mph side; I was CLEARLY NOT entering into a 45MPH zone. Additionally, since when it is a crime to go get close to another speed limit zone at a certain speed? Technically if I was going 60MPH (the speed limit) in his proposed scenario, I would still be at fault. Plus, if I was close enough to the 45MPH zone for him to be concerned, he would have written the ticket for 75 in a 45, and not in a 60. Next, I did not slow down because I saw him. I did not slow down at all! Strike two, another lie. If he had not gotten behind me to pull me over, I would have gone 75MPH (along with everyone else) until I got to the hockey rink. I suppose this one could be a perception call, but I did not have my foot on the brake, and I had no intention of slowing down. After telling me those two things, he said "this is going to be a ticket, so I will be right back." He went to his car, got the ticket prepared, then came back and explained that it was not an admission of guilt and all the other crap they lay on you. I signed the paper, and he tore off my copy, handed it to me, and walked away! He mumbled something under his breath that I could not hear while walking away. By the way, they were using CARBON PAPER! CARBON PAPER!!!!!!! What? Really? 2008 and and this jackoff is making impressions on carbon paper so I can have a copy? What the fuck does he do with his part of the docuement, make a mimeograph of it and put it in his cabinet? Come on Highway Patrol, get out of the 60s and get a fucking computer. The city cops in all the surrounding areas use hand held wireless computers, and wireless printers to produce your ticket, and they ride fucking motorbikes! But I digress...

Great, now what? Was I done? I didn't have a clue, so I dicked around for a few minutes in the truck acting like I was filing papers or some shit. He turned off his red and blues, and sat there for a little while, and then he put his car in reverse and backed up maybe 50 yards. I assumed this meant that I was free to go, so I did.

Ok, so he did not ask to see my insurance. I had it in my hand when he came back with my ticket, and I tried to sort of hand it to him, and he said "That's ok, I don't need that." If there is a law in the state saying you must have it, they should damn sure ask for it. No wonder so many people just don't give a shit. Next, what happened to the good old days, when the city cops were dicks, and the Highway Patrol guys were cool. A long time ago, the fuzz would always ask you who you have in the car with you, where you are going, why you are going there, why you are going so fast, what items do you have in the car, can they look around, etc.. This is what I have grown to expect from officers.

This guy did not give a single squirt of liquid shit what I was doing. It was 9:45 at night, it was 40 degrees, and raining, and I was wearing shorts and a MetallicA shirt, and I hadn't shaved in a couple of weeks, and I had a huge green bag in the back seat of my truck. Fuck only knows what I could have been up to. I would have interrogated me for at least a good 15 minutes on exactly what the hell I was up to. What if I had 100 pounds of crack cocaine, automatic weapons, and a bomb in the bag? This doucher would not have had a clue.

Now, I am a law abiding citizens, and the law enforcement professionals are not my enemy. They exist to protect and serve taxpayers such as myself, and this piss stick was only concerned about writing me a ticket? What if the next guy he stopped really did have a huge bag of contraband? This pole smoker would have let the guy skip right through his fingers. Rather than taking 60 seconds of his time and potentially becoming a local hero, this dill weed's neglect and shirking of duty could be partially responsible for something really bad happening.

So now I can go to court, and fight the ticket, and probably easily get it dismissed since the guy was such a monkey dong, and in the process make him look like a real bell end for totally shirking, and possibly make him think about his actions next time he gets bored. I truly have no motivation for doing this. The guy was not really rude, short of not saying goodbye, verifying that the procession was over, confirming that I could then leave. He was just not a very good communicator. I am almost certain that he did not even identify himself when he approached my window. There was a brief few seconds, where I had my doubts that this guy was even a legitimate law officer.

The easiest course of action appears to be to enter a "deferred disposition". So I sign a piece of paper, pay the fine, and not get another violation for 90 days, and the whole thing magically disappears.

Texas converted to a "points" based system in 2003, so that you get "points" assessed to your driver's license for each violation. After so many points, your insurance rates can go up, and they assess an exorbitant fee just to renew your license. This being the case, practically everyone who gets a violation is going to try something to make it go away, whether it be fighting it with a lawyer, doing deferred disposition, or taking defensive driving. It would seem then, that the patrolmen should simply hand out deferred disposition citations. Seems like this might be a better method of handling this, and that way you still punish the repeat offenders.

The system is corrupt. It is setup so that tickets mean nearly nothing since most of them magically disappear after 90 days, but the city or county still gets the full amount of the fine. What kind of shit is that? It almost makes me sick to my stomach to think about just pleading "no contest" and having it go away, yet they make it so damn hard to go through the process of fighting it that it’s counterproductive. It is a sad state of affairs when a fleet of once mighty Highway Patrol officers who were highly respected are demoted into ticket jockeys who only generate revenue for their respective counties. Shame on you Texas. Shame shame, I know your name.