I'm still fuming.

I dropped Patricia off at LAX this morning on my way to work, to fly to Florida. She had a 7:40 flight.

She usually carries on, but today she had a couple pieces of luggage to check, so we decided that I'd park the car and help her check in. Now, to park at LAX is a minimum of three bucks for the first hour, but downstairs, at the arrival level, there are metered lots that take quarters, and I figured fifty cents would do me. Of course, this means that one has to enter the airport on the arrival level, which at 6 AM is almost empty since there are few arrivals that early. I cruised past an airport motorcycle cop, at the speed limit, or at least no faster than traffic. But he decided to pull out after me and turned on his flashers.

We pulled over, and he walked up to the car and informed me that we'd been pulled over because we didn't have a front license plate. Now, I've been meaning to put it on, but the last time I tried, the screws that I bought at Pep Boys didn't fit the holes on the front bumper. He took the license and registration (I'm a Wyoming resident, with a Wyoming drivers' license), and took about ten minutes, presumably to run a check on this blatant and dangerous criminal. He finally came back with a ticket. It wasn't a moving violation, and it could be dismissed, with a service fee, if I corrected the problem and drove to the DMV to get it signed off. Of course, because we'd pulled over into a side road heading away from our terminal, we had to backtrack to reenter the airport, costing even more time.

So to save a couple bucks, I now have to deal with the hassle of correcting a problem on a car that's about to move to Florida, and we almost missed her flight. If I'd taken the upper level and parked up there, that cop wouldn't have seen us at all, and there would have been much more traffic, resulting in many better things to do for whatever law enforcement was up there.

The coupe de grace, of course, was that, after all this, the metered lot ended up being closed.

Anything and everything about going to the airport always stresses me out, even if your just there is pick up and drop off.

I was going to a job interview, running a little late, but still just driving with the flow of traffic which in Texas is usually 10 miles over the speed limit. I was behind a large truck that I couldn't see around in my low Mustang that suddenly slammed on the brakes. So, I hit my turn signal and got over just in time to see a Constable with his laser speed gun pointed right at me. Of course he pulls me over and I get a 74 in a 60 ticket which is on a section of highway where everyone drive 75 but somehow being in a red Mustang GT just makes it more dangerous. Speaking of danger though everyone on the road at the time around me was doing just fine till he popped up sitting on the side of the road and incurred an unsafe situation. Whats good though is that I got the job, the bad is that now I don't have any time to go to court and plead not guilty. Even though I always lose my case everytime, I figure if I have to pay I might as well get my money's worth out of the court system.

Dontcha just love paying for all these goverment "services."

Rich

I'm pretty sure that it's legal in California to have only a back plate, or at least the documents that came with my plates (which are only two years old) said that it was.

No, they've been cracking down on it recently. I think that they may have changed the law a year or two ago--yet another departing gift from Gumbie Davis.

Traffic cops exist IMHO, for the following reasons:

1) To collect taxes for the gov't in the form of tickets

2) A jobs program

3) A pad to the numbers of police so that politicians can say things like: "I've increased the number of police officers .... "

4) Safety? not.

In your particular case, they need front plates on everyone's car so that photos from the automatic camera ticket machines can hold up in traffic court, hence the drive to enforce the front plate law.

I'm sure that that airport cop is assigned there for Homeland Security purposes, but unfortunately he seems to have reverted to his tax collector training. Let's be charitable and say that he didn't stop you for the plate, but to "check you out" because you looked suspicious. Maybe he was afraid you'd sue due to profiling if he didn't find something to "tax" you with.

I thought there were informal policies that limited nuisance ticketing in high traffic areas, so that traffic flow would not be impeded. If there is not such a policy, there damn well should be.

Better luck next time.

The problem was that it wasn't a high-traffic area. It was the arrival level at 6 AM, so I was one of the few targets of opportunity.