Arrest-Proof Yourself (57 page)

Naturally, this takes much of the fun out of riding bikes, which for most kids is their first taste of freedom from their parents and an important stage in growing up. These bicycle laws were passed by city commissions and state legislatures to protect children’s safety. Unfortunately, the welfare state has an unfortunate tendency to morph into the police state. For police, bicycle safety laws have become another means of making more arrests and racking up more points. Children need to stay free and out of jail long enough to grow up, straighten up, and become citizens. Help them out.

Help yourself out as well. Don’t tool around on a stolen bike, and don’t forget to use the light at night. To get arrested and dumped on the plantations due to a bicycle infraction is beyond tragic.

28

CAR CREDS ARE THE KEY TO KEEP YOU FREE

C
ar creds are lengthier than street creds for the simple reason that your car can carry more stuff that can get you arrested than your pockets or your purse. In addition, your vehicle can carry things secreted or misplaced by others that can get you arrested. Car creds are used like street creds. You hand them, all together in a business-size envelope, to the police officers who pull you over for a traffic stop. They establish that

1. you are not clueless arrest fodder

2. you have an attorney and social backup

3. you are who you claim to be

Creds stop the interrogation as police read them. When cops ask you questions about your creds, use the street-creds answers in Chapter 19.

IMPORTANT:
You will note that car creds call for photocopies of driver’s licenses of the car owner and anyone else authorized to drive the car.
These copies in no way replace actual driver’s licenses or release you from your legal obligation to carry a license
. An emergency backup, the copies are for those times you may leave home without your license. The only purpose of the copies is to help keep you out of jail.

Note also that car creds have spaces for you to grant written permission to relatives who are authorized to drive your vehicle. Any authorized driver should also be a named insured on your insurance policy. This permission will explain to cops why someone other than the registered owner is driving the vehicle.

Last, there are spaces for you to make copies of prescriptions for medicines you or passengers may be carrying in containers other than the orange plastic containers that have legal prescription labels on them. You must make these copies
before
you hand in the prescription to the pharmacist. If you carpool, make sure to get photocopies of prescriptions from passengers or insist that they carry medicines in legally labeled containers. Anyone taking prescription meds for long periods for chronic conditions is likely to ditch the orange bottle and put pills in handier, shatter-resistant containers that do not have legal labels. This is a problem.

Remember, some prescriptions should not be taken when operating machinery like a car. If you take such a medicine, do
not
include it in your car creds.

Moms, be ultracareful about kiddie narcotics. Kids who have been prescribed stimulants and tranquilizers frequently carry the pills loose in their pockets, where they fall between cushions in the backseats. Kids also sell these drugs and give them to friends who want to get high, often unseen by you in your very own car! You, not the child, will get hammered during a police search. Syringes used for injections of insulin, which is legal, or performance-enhancing steroids, which are not, also fall out of book bags and show up in cars.

29

DON’T GET IN A LURCH. DO A SEARCH!

H
aving cops search your car is a real nail-biter. Will they find something ? Am I toast? You can avoid substantial aggravation by searching your own car. The time to search is now, in the quiet of your home, where you can discreetly dispose of anything found, and
not
in the confused moments before a traffic stop when the blue and red lights are in the rearview mirror. I advise everyone to search their vehicles in the following circumstances.

Your children drive your car.

Friends or relatives drive your car.

You drive passengers who enjoy the magic herb or other controlled substances.

You drive children who take kiddie narcotics such as Ritalin or Valium.