I've been pulled over 2 times in the last two years, both times were late night/early morning. One time the trooper was on the same road going the other direction with both of us going roughly 60mph and his reason for pulling me over was that "I noticed when you went by that your window looked like it was tinted a little to dark"
I told him I'd rather he be honest with me and tell me he wanted to see if I was drunk. I'd have been fine with that, but told him the fact that he was just flat out lying to me kind of agitated me. He was obviously annoyed and insisted that he was going to check them anyway because that's why he pulled me over...I was fine with it. I Knew they weren't quite legal and am willing to take the ticket. Legal here is 30% they checked at 26% because I put 30% oover the factory tint.... I said WOW You're good... and kind of chuckled a little because he knew he was stone cold busted.:rofl: Then I got the "well I'm not going to give you a ticket for it because you're being cooperative and all so I'm going to cut you a huge break, but I'm going to tell you that you WILL get hassled for it." I said well it's been on here for 5 years and you're the first one that's said a word about it.
The second time was early in the morning also in which the guy walked up to the window with an attitude from the start. I was driving under the speed limit doing nothing wrong at all and he says "Let me have your license and proof of insurance right now...SON" and that instantly pissed me off and I said "As soon as you tell me what I did wrong DAD." And I'll never forget the way he said "Don't get smart with me...You have no license plate light on the rear of the vehicle that's what." He got pissed when I told him not to call me "son" seeing as he couldn't have been 3 or 4 years older than me, then handed him my License and ins card laughing and says to me "You think this is funny?" and I said Yes I do because I have one license plate and it's on the front bumper so what difference does it make if the back bumper has a light on it?" He says "it still has to work regardless of weather or not YOU think you need it or not. I then asked if I could go look at it to see if I could fix it and he said no there is no need to create a road hazard to fix it on the side of the road....I just said Really? And I'm sitting here thinking WTF EVER. Again I got the "I'm gonna cut you a huge break here" speech and I'm sure he could tell from my face I didn't believe a word he said. And once I got home and looked... surprise surprise light was working fine and still is to this day.
I have no problem with LEO of any kind as long as they are honest and respectful which 99.9% that I've met are, but when they make up BS stuff to hassle people it gets on my nerves and you don't forget those few that make the rest look bad. I've decided the best way I can figure to deal with it is to think like this.
You should ALWAYS respect the badge even if you don't respect the D bag wearing it. Let the judge decide if you think you've been treated unfair.
Or in this case I suppose you could talk to a lawyer and see if they think your situation is worth perusing. I'd probably just chalk it up to a bad day myself but that's just me and if I really had nothing to hide I'd probably made a little more of a stink about it while it was happening. Waiting for the alcohol to leave your system for a few hours or a day and then making a big deal is going to be a waste of time. If you had any alcohol at all they pretty much have you by the balls no matter what.
But what can we do about it? They all cover for each other even if they don't like the officer they're covering for. There's a trooper in town that does some construction work on the side that I grew up with that calls us when he needs demo work done and I've heard him complain about having to stick up for bad troopers because it's frowned upon to leave your "brother LEO's high and dry".
There have been several complaints around here over the last few years and the biggest thing that's been done is they transferred one of the guys that hassled me to another troop that stationed him 15 miles away from here after a huge deal was made because he wrote the county sheriffs wife a ticket for honking her horn in town " because it was not an emergency situation and she was distracting other drivers".:happy2:
