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| USA Forever Postage Stamp w/floral accents CARD by Lynne Dee |
One Motorist Story: Justice Denied
I have been driving in L.A. for the last 20 years.
On Saturday January 16th of 2010, I was stopped and pulled over in my car at 8:30 in the morning by an LAPD traffic cop on a motorcycle. I had one passenger in the car. What I didn’t know then but came to learn was that an undercover LAPD traffic operation sting was being carried out on W. Washington Blvd. at the intersection of Lovelace on that early morning in January. But that’s getting ahead of the story.
On that day, I had just turned onto Washington Blvd. off of Vermont to travel the straight mile and a half to Broadway. As soon as I turned onto Washington Blvd. the road was all torn up and gravelly. All lanes and crosswalks were gone. It appeared that the road was undergoing a prepping for re-paving. I would observe later that some time would pass before the road would be re-paved. Here I was on this January morning worrying that I might blow a tire. I slowed down to less than 25 mph. But there was another problem. Dust from other cars also made driving hazardous. Had I been more familiar with the area I might have turned off the road completely but I had only my directions for where I was going using Washington Blvd, to arrive at Broadway. I noted a police car to my left traveling in the same direction. When we got the green light, the dust created by that police car to my left made me want to slow down a bit more so as to get a bit more distance between us. The torn up road and the dust together made it such a challenge to drive on this very early Saturday morning. I had a green light at the point a motorcycle cop stopped me. Was anyone concerned for driver safety and think to block off this part of Washington or was it only the agenda of the LAPD to “catch” drivers putting pedestrians at risk by not stopping as they crossed? In a culture whereby the LAPD must be questioned on their agenda vs. safety, I want to draw attention to what I feel may be more of an agenda than safety concerns by the LAPD.
Contemplate this: the LAPD, and I don’t know who or at what level, authorized this sting and at that “exact” location on Washington Blvd at Lovelace… to catch drivers not yielding to plain clothes cops. So let’s get this straight… We have a torn up road that poses a danger to drivers and then have at the very first crosswalk after the gravel ends, along w/the dust, undercover cops pretending to be pedestrians crossing the street.
When I asked what I was being cited for I honestly had no idea. When he said failure to yield to peds I was in shock. There were no pedestrians. My passenger said she saw no pedestrians. In hindsight I have to question if the plainclothes cops were on a break… and the cops in uniform were on a roll just to make the quota for JANUARY PEDESTRIAN SAFETY MONTH. It took 11 months from the time I got the ticket to face my accuser and a judge. Never having gotten a moving violation before I was new to the procedure in court. But I did have a timeline and some photos for the judge, as I pled NOT GUILTY. Once there we were told to find the cop who ticketed us and show him our defense. That was when I first learned about the sting and the phony peds. What I realized at that point, and I think this is crucial, is that if this was a sting, why weren’t there videos or at least photos of the pedestrians in the crosswalk. How about bringing in the cops who pretended to be peds and have them under oath. Here is an ideal situation where a video would be proof and yet there was none. I asked the cop, well, do you have some proof for me that a sting was ordered. He said no. When I asked where exactly these peds were, he claimed they were in the middle of the crosswalk. I asked him, “so if a car was traveling at the slow speed I was going, they would see these peds clearly and that 2 people in the car would see them” and he said yes. I knew at this point he was telling a lie. The judge doesn’t seem to connect the dots that this sting was conveniently set up so close to a torn up road that these variables would favor the LAPD in their sting. I never had a chance at justice.
I wrote down the name of the judge or at least the name on the plaque on the judge’s bench. Turns out this wasn’t even the right name of the judge. My judge was a light skinned black man. The judge on the plaque, when goggled, was a white man.
The entire experience of traffic court smells rotten. I know I am not alone in my observation. In closing, I have to ask these two questions.
Why do we tolerate such unfairness in a court of law? Who, if anyone, will care?
Your whole experience smells of corruption on all levels. Unfortunately, had you had a GPS in your car, if you had turned off the unpaved road, the GPS would have recalculated your route and this whole episode might have been prevented.
ReplyDeleteAs they say, hindsight is 20/20 but you were in the right and "justice" was in the wrong.
Shame, shame on those deceptive individuals.