is it illegal not to have id in America?? - Page 2

OK can't stay out of this any longer.

when did driving become a privileged that you have to pay continuing fees for. ?

The constitution guarantees the right of un incumbered travel. travel was once horses and wagons, now it's cars and motorcycles

I under the difference, but if you don't learn how to drive a team and wagon or ride a horse they can kill you and others too.

I can understand a driving test Once to show proficiency. I can not understand continuing fees. I pay for my share of the highways every time I buy fuel so, that's not it.

What date did peace officers and policemen/women become LAW ENFORCEMENT officers.

S.W.A.T teams were developed in LA for Hostage situations now they are full fledged military units used for just about every thing. Can you say Posse Comotadis.

IN the old days mps/sps went to the front of the line in peace officer hiring my sources tell me not today they are trained as piece officers not law enforcement and go to the back of the line or out right rejected out right.

No I am not and never have been a police officer but, my dad was a us Marshall for 30 yrs then town Marshall in my home town for 15 more. He never carried his gun,in 15 years the only time he took it out of the bedroom dresser drawer was when some escaped convicts were supposed to be near our town.
sry for the rant but I miss my America so.

Olddude I know on my job the ex-military personel are highly sought after to the point that recruiters are sent to a few military bases handing out applications. Had alot of ex-marines being hired in the last 5 years. Most are gulf war vets. I can not speak for other departments but here it is run as a para-military organization. Ranks from police officer(privates) up to chiefs(generals). They like having new officers who are used to having that structure bei g already ingrained into them so they are easier to train and get them up to speed on how to be a police offier. I notice the difference between the ex-military people and the others who havent had that type of training before.

As far as your other points all I can say is times change and not for the best. Thats what happens when the inmates run the asylum.

I try and carry ID at all times...if something were to happen I would want my wife notified as quickly as possible so that critical decisions can be made.

I tell two stories about being stopped by local law and then I’m done with this thread.

About a dozen years ago my folks moved into a retirement village and sold their house of 41 years. This meant I had to empty all my junk that I had been storing in their basement since I had gotten married. I built a lot of military models when I was young so had numerous boxes (most of them diaper boxes as we had young kids) full of model planes, tanks, ships, etc. I also had some bachelor furniture, some even home made that the wifey didn’t want in our house that I had in their basement. Anyway, for whatever reason I loaded up the 87 Dodge pu I had as a secondary vehicle with all this junk and was headed over to my SiL’s place to store my boxes of models.

It was Dec. and dark probably just before 9 pm. The SiL lives in a tougher part of town but probably pretty tame when compared with some of the neighborhoods you all deal with. At a stop light I noticed a cruiser get in behind me. The light goes green, I drive about a block & half, signal a left hand turn, and then he lights me up. I stop just beyond an intersection.

I wasn’t exactly looking like a corporate lawyer. Wearing a stocking cap (its winter remember), an old Army fatigue jacket with a hooded zippered sweatshirt as a liner. The cop asks me for the general particulars at the window and says I have a tail or brake light out (can’t remember which). Asks me what I doing as he shines his flashlight over all my junk in the bed of the truck (luckily nothing looked like too much value). He asks me to get out of the truck so we can talk some more.

We get out and he shines the flash in my eyes (I suppose to see if there was noticeable drug use) then he asks me if I have any weapons on me, makes me open my coat and unzip the sweatshirt. I think he even did a quick pat down in back (can’t remember for sure). Then we get into his car and I end up repeating my story about 3 more times in different orders. Maybe standard mo to get bad guys to slip up in telling lies but he just found it hard to believe that I would moving this stuff at night. Sure seems he wanted to find something illegit in what I was doing. He finally wrote me a ticket for the bad light and let me go on my way. I had 3 days to prove up that I fixed the light.

Can’t remember why I didn’t get to fixing it the next night (we had a single garage at the time and the wifey’s car was inside so any repairs to the truck were outside). Finally, a couple of nights later, in much colder temps then the traffic stop, I get the new bulb in the truck’s taillights, and head down to the cop shop to “prove Up” that I fixed it. The building has a public foyer that has an officer behind locked glass that can answer questions. I produce the warning ticket and I assume that the desk sgt. was going to come out behind the desk and check out my truck. Nope, he isn’t going to go out into the cold. I start talking about what the problem was, and blah, blah, and the sgt. Looks up from his desk with my ticket in hand and says, “you want me to sign this or not”. OK, I can take a hint and I shut up. The ticket gets signed with no proof that I fixed the violation and viola, off I go on my merry way back home. And so it goes.

The other (shorter) story in the morning.

My last story about being stopped by the law is more recent and actually deals with scrapping.

As I’ve mentioned in another thread, I (we) gather bulkier steel items out at my bro’s country place and then when good amount has built up, we take it in. He has a 2003 F 250 diesel pu but this load was going to be bigger than just the box so a trailer was needed. He didn’t want to take his bigger trailer for whatever reason (can’t remember for sure—maybe not licensed for the year—how ironic that would be if true) so he runs next door to the neighbor who has a smaller trailer and hooks it up and we get started loading.

The only true “yard” in the bigger town next to me closes fairly earlier on Saturdays (11 AM I think) and its pushing 10 when we get finished and on the road. Get on the hard top that leads to a state highway that goes into town, we pass a popular local lake area. There are signs about some sort of triathlon going on and we see a state hypo driving slow (I suppose in support of the people running and such so drivers are paying more attention). We don’t think anything about it. Bro stops the truck at the stop sign at the state highway and gets out to check the tie downs on the load to make sure they’re secure. About that time, the state hypo has turned around and is now pulling up behind.

We turn onto the state highway heading towards the yard when the hypo lights us up about a quarter mile down from the stop sign. I think for sure it has something to due with how the scrap load is secured. Hypo walks up and I can’t remember if he asked the questions first before telling what the infraction was or not. “Hey, you’re bleeding!” he says to bro, who had snagged himself with some chain link fence while we were loading. The retired Col. also has a skin condition that shows bruising a lot easier than most people so his arms often look like h***. He explains why he’s bleeding. “Hey, you guys have bug spray on?” Why yes, we do, lots of skeeters out about then in the early morning at the country place and we had dosed ourselves to keep them under control. Couldn’t tell if this question was just a mere statement of fact or that bug spray has now some new use in covering up drug use or making? Another question or two and finally, the infraction; the trailer doesn’t have current tags on it, by several years (bro and I both groan in unison).

The rest was sort of anti-climatic. A warning ticket is written. The hypo also comments on the numerous cracks that bro’s truck windshield has but don’t think a ticket was written for that. I know that bro had at least one loaded pistol in the truck, perhaps two (we both have CCs; I rarely use mine, he does whenever he drives). There was no questions about weapons and no information was volunteered. Later, the bro was talking with a guy he knows from Guards who works as a county deputy and this guy said that because the truck had National Guard plates on it, the hypo may have been a bit easier on us because they don’t know if the driver was on official business or not (but with a big load of scrap, probably doubtful for official duty). Or maybe the hypo was just a decent guy, a bit more inquisitive than I might be, but just doing his job. The upside was that we made it to the yard and got rid of the load before it closed. And, the bro took another, less traveled route home so to avoid another stop by the law if they saw the expired trailer tags.

About 25ish years ago around midnight, my brother ran out to get something out of his truck outside the townhouse he lived at and the door locks behind him. He's trying to get in (wife is sound asleep) when police roll up and start questioning him. ID is in the house so after a bit they believe that he lives there and then say that he has a unpaid ticket for "Dog at Large". Bro say's that he thought the wife had paid that but he will take care of it first thing in the morning. Not good enough for them...it had gone to warrant and they took him to jail.

Wife never woke up and didn't hear the phone when he called from jail so he called me...picked him up just in time to make last call at the watering hole.

KzS- Man, that's just crazy. A guy couldn't write that script for a tv show or movie that good. Does your bro smile about it now??

Bureaucracies love things they can count. Its called metrics. A lower manager can show a higher manager who adds more metrics into reports, etc. all the way up the line. Makes it appear that whatever the entity is, they are doing something!! Busting your brother that night for an old warrant did nothing to make the city safer or to make it more money that night or whatever. The only thing it did was to add to a count somewhere that could go into a metrics dump. It didn't matter what effort it took to bring your brother to jail and potentially someone else was victimized because a couple of officers were busy with this "event" or did it matter the stress your brother endured for such a silly waste of time. But it counted somewhere for some mostly faceless manager to the public and got added into the grand metrics that the department was out there doing their job.

Repeat different agency, different mission, same overwhelming need for managers to prove themselves worthy. I see it everyday if I'm forced to watch. Luckily, I can spend most of my time ignoring bureaucrats as much as possible. Only when things are mandatory do I have to listen to them. But my work still ends up in a metrics count...