Arrest-Proof Yourself (49 page)

Do you know if your license is suspended and you’re driving outlaw? If you’ve been moving around, “staying at” different places, or if you’re sloppy about reading your mail, you may not know. You don’t want to be cop bait, so find out. Here’s how. In some states, you can check your license status through the Internet or over the telephone. If this isn’t possible, you can generally go to an automobile insurance agency. They can go online with their computers and find out if your license is valid or suspended. Auto tag agencies also can do this, as well as motor vehicle bureau offices. Remember, the people you’re talking to are clerks, not cops. They can’t arrest you, so ask for their help. If you don’t know how to use computers or are confused when talking to government and insurance clerks, get a friend, family member, or social worker to help.

If you discover your license is suspended, get busy paying the fines and fees necessary to have your license reinstated. In the computer age, your ability to drive with a suspended license in a city for any length of time is approximately zero.

TRAFFIC COURT

Traffic court is a bit more relaxed than circuit court, but don’t be fooled. Those traffic judges are real judges. They’ve got
the power
. They’ve got
the juice
. If you annoy them they can, with a snap of a finger, have you arrested. So here are the rules.

1. Show up! Skip traffic court and, in many states, judges will issue a bench warrant for your arrest. Once you’re on ice, the judge can summon you at his or her discretion, which means after you’ve been locked up for a few days and are fully nourished by a diet of beanie-weenies and green baloney sandwiches. Before your court day, wind up those alarm clocks and get friends and family to help you wake up, dress up, and show up. Bring all paperwork. If you need copies, get them the day before at motor vehicle bureau offices.

2. Be respectful, even if this is not your style. Say “Yes, your honor” and “No, your honor.” No cussing, no arguing.

3. Spit out gum and chewing tobacco before you talk to the judge.

4. Turn off pagers and cell phones. These things make judges nuts when they go off.

5. No ranting about racism. Judges, many of whom are black, Hispanic, Jewish, or Asian, will not be sympathetic. Keep on topic, i.e., explain how you’re going to pay all fines and fees and get your license reinstated. If you annoy judges sufficiently, they can keep you in custody while they ponder, slowly, the evidence of your case. So behave.

OUTSTANDING WARRANTS

Traffic stops are the way most people with outstanding warrants get arrested. To deal with this, you’ve first got to know
whether you have a warrant
. Sounds obvious, but many people don’t know.

One of my neighbors at the condo I own in Jacksonville missed some drug-court appearances. She assumed a warrant had been issued for her arrest, so she took off on the lam and spent a year hiding in Georgia and working under assumed names. A year later, her boyfriend got arrested during a traffic stop (he
did
have an outstanding warrant), but she was released. Turns out the prosecutor had never pursued her case, and she never even knew it. Her car, alas, was seized and impounded. Moral of story: Read that mail! And don’t allow people with outstanding warrants to drive
your
car.

So how do you find out if you have an outstanding warrant? This is not easy. You can go to the courthouse and ask to see your case file. It’s public information. Unfortunately, it may be written in legalese. It may use the Latin term
capias
instead of the English word
warrant
. There are other difficulties. If you have a significant warrant, you could get arrested. Inside the courthouse, you’re inside the belly of the beast. Cops everywhere.

The only sure way to handle this is to hire a criminal defense attorney to check for you. If you have a warrant for a petty crime or an administrative offense like failing to appear in court or driving with a suspended license, the attorney can negotiate with prosecutors and judges to get the matter resolved
without your being arrested
. If you have a warrant for a serious crime, the attorney can arrange your surrender. This costs money. Freedom isn’t free.

Now you have some basics of how traffic laws really work. For government, it’s all about paperwork, fees, and citizen inspection. For police, it’s all about making arrests. Amazingly, traffic safety still happens.

24

MIRROR, MIRROR IN THE CAR, WILL THE COPS STAY NEAR OR FAR?

W
ho hasn’t had this experience? You’re rolling down the road, happy as a clam. Suddenly, in the rearview mirror, there are blue lights, red lights, strobes popping, blinding searchlights, sirens, radio antennas, and heaven knows what else bristling from the cruiser rack. It’s the cops! If you committed some obvious infraction, you know why they’re behind you. When the blue lights are spinning and the siren is whooping, there’s nothing to do but pull over.

But what if the lights are not flashing? What if the cops are just hanging behind your bumper or driving alongside or standing in the median with or without a radar gun and facing oncoming traffic? Now what? The situation is tense. What you do in the next few seconds will determine whether you get pulled or whether the police vanish. The emphasis of this chapter is how
not to get stopped
. The next chapter will cover what to do when you do get stopped so that a traffic ticket does not become an arrest.

Police have wide discretion in deciding which cars to stop. Absent an obvious infraction, what makes them decide to pull one car and not another? Recall that the major purpose of traffic stops is to reach out and arrest someone. The uniform traffic codes list so many violations that, for practical purposes, police always have a reason to stop a car. Whether to stop you or let you go therefore depends on your perceived
arrestability
, just like it does when you walk the streets. Clueless people are more arrestable; savvy people are less arrestable.
¹⁶
You can judge your risk by rating your car arrestability quotient (Car-Q) on the handy chart in this chapter. The higher your Car-Q, the more likely you are to be pulled over by police.

Cops have an uncanny ability to slide in behind you before you notice them. The benefits of closing in on your rear bumper are twofold.

1. It allows police to run your license plate on their computers and check for unpaid tickets and outstanding warrants.

2. Itpressuresyouintocluelessbehaviorsthatmakeyouarrestable. If you turn rabbit and step on the gas, the cops will get a chase and a treasure trove of felony charges and points when they arrest you.

Think of streets as oceans in which vast schools of traffic fish are constantly swimming. Sedans, pickup trucks, and SUVs are ordinary fish; VW Beetles and MINI Coopers are tiny, colorful reef fish; and semitrucks and limousines are whales. Cops are sharks. Clueless drivers exhibit prey behaviors that stimulate the hunting response. Believe me, these decisions truly are stimulus-response. They happen instantaneously, with no thought necessary. At most, a cop will say to his partner, “Wow! Look at that. Let’s go!” Here are some clueless behaviors that stimulate cops to stop you even when you have not committed an obvious traffic violation.

THE HEAD BOBBLE AND GOOSENECK STRETCH.
When you suddenly start bobbing your head and stretching your neck to watch the cops in the rearview mirror, police may stop you to find out why you’re so nervous.

When you need to sneak a peek at the cops, flick your eyes up toward the mirror
without
turning your head. This will avoid the head bobble that stimulates police to stop you.

REACHING.
Any unusual motion inside the vehicle by driver or occupant will cause police attention. Cops will presume you are hiding contraband or acquiring a weapon.

HITTING THE BRAKES.
If you suddenly hit the brakes, cops in front of you will see your front end dip, a tip-off that you were speeding. If you’re truly unfortunate, or just plain stupid, and slam on the brakes while police are
behind
you, the cruiser will crash into your vehicle. Once cops disentangle themselves from deployed airbags and bent metal, they may emerge somewhat less cheerful than before.

PERFECT DRIVING.
Nobody drives perfectly. When cops see anyone driving perfectly, they get curious. They may stop you just to see what
^’
s up.

DOPE FLYING OUT WINDOWS.
Clueless people think that if they toss the bags, the cops cannot arrest them for possession. Wrong.