Hero Porker vs. Biker

Right. The ingrained reflex in all cops to call in a tag the moment they spot it in order to find something they can use to “get this guy” backfired in a big way.

Several years ago, I had to spin the legal roulette wheel with all my chips on the table, against representatives of not one but two local predatory gangs. They were over-eager to get some convictions on the (at the time) newly-rubber-stamped street racing statutes and reached a bit too far. It came down to a question of timeline – who did what, and when. The key was the exact time when the roadside tax collector ran my tag – as per the aforementioned ingrained reflex. I told my attorney to subpoena the records of all tags run by that particular unit number directly from FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) – through which all data flows for accredited agencies in the state. He asked why FDLE instead of the local PD records. I told him that, like video, those records can get lost or become “unavailable” so easily when it might weaken their case. Police agencies talk a big game about cooperation but when it comes down to recordkeeping, they treat each other with the unspoken understanding that they’re all crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

After explaining that, I said to my attorney, “They’re spending millions of dollars of our money on technology they can use to fuck us. We’re going to use it to fuck them!”

And we did.

The most telling part of that whole ordeal was the way all those who were part of the crime and punishment machine just didn’t care. The judge didn’t care. Hell, that prick scuttled out of the courtroom while the jury was deliberating, claiming he was late for starting his vacation, to be replaced by another bald guy wearing a dress and a indifferent attitude. The two cops didn’t care. They were probably getting time-and-a-half for having to actually string some words together in semi-coherent sentences because a jury isn’t going to just accept their pointed, accusatory finger as gospel the way the traffic court judges do. One of them was even kind enough to show up in his new motorcycle patrol outfit, complete with jackboots and diagonal leather strap across his chest. Oh, if only their uniform shirts were brown instead of white, we would have been witnessing the master race in the flesh.

Other than myself, the only one who had the slightest iota of skin in the game was the prosecutor, who was incandescent with rage at having lost the case – presumably because she would have to answer to her boss for all the taxpayer money she wasted in trying to get another tick mark on their conviction record.