rk's Journal: Run Chickie! Here comes da fuzz!

So, Friday night I'm driving with my wife and son through Tempe on my way to the bookstore so my wife can pick up her copy of this vampire/werewolf book everyone seems so gaga over.

I'm driving down McClintock Avenue when the red and blue lights come on behind me. "Hmmm... not speeding, plate is current, didn't do anything wrong". I turn off onto a tertiary street, and after a few minutes the officer comes up to us, asks for the trinity (license/registration/insurance) and informs us that our plate has been flagged for non-compliance with insurance. I did get a letter from the MVD that this would happen, because my policy got rewritten to comply with AZ law when we moved back, and that caused the old policy to be canceled. But I went to the MVD to straighten it out and they said everything was hunky-dory.

I want to stress at this point that the police officer was a complete professional through this, and was respectful, courteous and friendly the whole time. But he did notify me that he is basically forced by law to confiscate the car's license plate. He says "let me run this one more time and we'll see if it's just a computer glitch." He comes back again after a few minutes and says "you're free to go. I should've looked closer. The plate I put in came back to a Hyundai (we have a Ford Windstar), and I typed 225 instead of 255. Sorry for disturbing you."

Mildly annoying, sure, but it's only ten minutes, so no big deal, and he admitted he made a mistake which is way more than I expect from any government authority (Local cops in Tempe and Mesa are professional and decent human beings. I'm much more wary of Arpaio's boys). I started thinking about it more and more. If instead of a simple financial responsibility law infraction, the plate that is so similar to mine was tied to a violent criminal on the lam, or God forbid, some terrorist suspect? Would the simple act of hitting a record in the computer database woken the vast fitfully sleeping machine far beyond what a Tempe, AZ cop intended because of a duffed keyboard entry? I'm glad I didn't have to find out.

I think license plates should have a modulus check digit. :-)

Doesn't always have to with plates...

[Shadow Wrought]

A friend of mine was walking home from work when a couple cops pulled over and placed him into cuffs rather more violently than necessary- especially because he was resisting. As he sat in the back of the car wondering WTF was going on, they came back to him and apologized. Someone meeting his description had escaped on foot after raping a young woman in the neighborhood. My friend said he totally understood and that, since they couldn't do much more than that, he'd be happy to help them out with the "pe

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[rk]

Oh, sure, but the old saying "to err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer." applies, too. Let's just try a thought experiment. Suppose there's a flagged and known terrorist suspect in AZ (by all accounts, some of the 9/11 hijackers took flight training in Scottsdale) whose plate was similar to mine. If that goes into the computer, I would suspect that alarm bells from all kinds of data feeds into and out of the law enforcement network would be ringing loudly, and I doubt the friend

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[Shadow Wrought]

That's why whenever I get pulled over, I always open the door and run away. Cops love that;-)

The scenario you describe could so easily get even worse if the person misflagged is not an otherwise calm and reasonable individual. Though you're right about the potential "lottery" of the impending civil suit. Because sometimes, "Uh, sorry," just isn't enough.

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[DustMagnet]

Mistakes suck, but I'm far more worried about the "chilling effect" of data mining for suspects. Already you have to be careful not too look suspicious when a cop is near. As more and more things are logged, people will have to be careful not to look suspicious any time an action is logged, which is already starting to become continuous.

Did that cop log my plate? I didn't do anything, but I this area has lots of street dealers, so the computer might think I'm here to buy drugs. Good thing I didn't wi

I had a good one about two years ago

[JesseL]

My pregnant wife and I were out for a little drive one evening, just letting her get some air since the pregnancy made her a little prone to nausea. Heading towards home a local patrol car moved in behind us really quickly and hit his lights. We pulled over immediately and before the first officer was out of the car a few more police had pulled up.

When the officer came to my window I had my license, registration, proof of insurance, and Arizona concealed weapons permit ready to hand to him. He looked over e

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[Bill Dog]

Accord, ... Corolla, ... whatever.