Thursday, February 12, 2009

Ooops! I did it again . . .

Thursday marks the beginning of a five day break from school for my kids. So when I woke this morning, I knew I needed to get some baking done. With a houseful of teenagers, you'd better have things for them to snack on, or they'll gnaw the furniture. My kids and their friends happen to be partial to my homemade cookies. As I gathered the ingredients together, I discovered that my supply of brown sugar was low. I threw on my jacket, slipped on my shoes and headed to the store. On my way back to the house, I glanced in my rear view mirror and thought I caught a glimpse of flashing red and blue lights almost a block behind me.. As I turned onto my street, I peeked again, and sure enough, I was right. He rounded the corner behind me so I figured that I had better get out of his way so he could get where he was going. As I pulled to the curb, I realised that he was too - SHIT! I put the car in park and watched as the officer open his car door and walked towards my window. I was absolutely clueless as to why he would be pulling me over in front of my house. My first thought was that something had happened to one of my kids. I was actually relieved when he informed me that he had pulled me over because I had been going 44MPH. For a second I just looked at him. In my mind I was thinking, "So . . . Ridgeview is a 45 MPH street" Then I remembered passing the two schools where my children attend. Ooops! Very rarely do I drive passed the schools during school hours. I usually wait until after the kids are home from school to run errands. (I do my best to enjoy the silence that occurs while they're in school.)
He took my driver's license, insurance card, and registration and went back to his cruiser. I sat there patiently waiting, trying to remember the last time that I had a speeding ticket. I can't - it's been ages. My last ticket was for failure to move to the other lane as I passed a policeman while he was writing some one else a ticket. (He actually had a lane and a half on the shoulder of the road where he was parked) They ended up dropping that charge so that they could nail me for expired insurance instead. The insurance violation was also amended - after they got $350.00 in fines from me.
The policeman returned with a computer generated ticket and told me that my court date was set for March 21st, or I could mail the fine to the address on the back of the ticket before my court date. I mumbled an apology, and after he left, I put my car in gear and rolled the additional 10 feet into my drive way. Damn it, so close - I almost made it. I carried my bag of brown sugar into the house and sat down to look at how much my trip to the store had cost me. The last time I'd gotten a ticket, they still wrote them out by hand, filling in the blanks through three layers of cheap carbon paper. When I finally found the fine amount, I nearly went through the roof! $342.00!!! That's $18.00 per mile over the posted limit !! URGH !!! Well, I guess that's Johnson County - the greediest, most money hungry County in the state! It only cost $8.00 more to pay for a No Insurance Violation in Edwardsville, and that didn't even go on my record !!! What bullshit ! I guess somebody has to pay for the lap tops and video cameras in every police cruiser.

2 howled back:

Anonymous said...

Bloody damn. I hate police men doing their job :)

Dad and Mom said...

You are right, Johnson County has got to be the greediest county around. In fact in my dealings with Johnson County law enforcement no matter if it's OP, Lenexa, Sherriff, Shawnee, Olathe or any of them it is insane. I always thought as I get older I would respect and apprciate the cops more, it has been just the opposite for me. I have found they are more like Barney Fife than Andy Taylor.

I have also found that counties and city government RELY on fines for their general budgets. It truely is counted as a revenue center by politicians so I don't see anything getting better. Especially with red light cameras and now they are talking about speeding cameras that mail tickets too.