Screwed.

One thing I’ve always wondered is why I kept seeing, practically every day, a motorist getting pulled over by a cop literally within a stone’s throw of the intersection near my highway exit. It was, as I said, almost a daily sight on my commute home. I postulated then that either I was witnessing an incredible coincidence, or that something was rotten in the city of Montreal. Today I got my answer.

Today it was my dubious priviledge to be the sucker who got picked to lighten the local traffic cop’s quota by a ticket. I took the intersection as I usually do, and as soon as I was on the main road what do you know but a police vehicle was on my tail, with all lights on. I pulled over on the next block, and the cop pulled alongside me to tell me to pull into the next side street. Later on it dawned on me that recently I hadn’t seen so many people pulled over. Smart. Tell them to move to a side street and the little game becomes a lot less blatant.

I still had no idea what the hell this was all about. I wasn’t speeding. In fact I couldn’t think of anything I should be getting pulled over for. That being said, when a cop tells you to pull over you do it, if for nothing else then for lack of alternatives. So I pulled into the next side street, very much puzzled as to what the whole commotion was all about.

So the cop lumbers over to my open window, asks to see the usual papers. I ask what’s wrong, he says that I drove through a red at the intersection. I happen to know that I did not and tell him that the light was yellow as I drove through it. This is one of the more major roads in Montreal — very wide and one of the arteries, and it would be suicide to drive through a red there at rush hour. Unfazed — probably used to the reaction, in fact — the cop claimed that the light was green on his side when I drove through. I didn’t argue. By then I could figure out what was up — the guy was probably one ticket shy of his quota and I was the “lucky winner”.

Now, I’ve been thinking about this for a few hours. I’ve narrowed the possibilities to three scenarios:

1. the policeman was just lying. That’s possible. A policeman knows that in a situation like this one — where things, if taken to their logical conclusion, would come down to my word versus his — he has the absolute advantage. In a court in this city or province there is no way in hell that I can contradict what a policeman says and have my version of events judged to be the correct one. Not gonna happen.
2. the policeman was being overzealous, and only a small part of my car had not completely cross the median by the time the light turned green the opposite way. Technically that means that we’re both correct. It’s also frankly a dishonest and opportunistic way to enforce traffic regulations. That is, in my estimation, at least as likely as scenario 1 — the traffic cop’s version of “shooting fish in a barrel.” In neither this case nor case 1 is any proof required other than the policeman’s word, so it’s pretty much a risk-free ticket. KA-CHING!
3. the lights at that particular corner are poorly synchronized, and allow a certain amount of overlap between a yellow on the north-south axis and a green on the east-west axis. Normally I would think this unlikely, but then we are talking about the same city that lets potholes over 1 foot in diameter exist more or less indefinitely. Although this would introduce an extraneous element into the mix this explanation still involves a considerable amount of bad faith on the part of the ticketer, who would undeniably be intimately aware of the issue — the police station from which Mr. Personality was dispatched is literally one street corner away from where he, coincidences of coincidences, happened to be standing when he “spotted” the “infraction.” In any case that would certainly explain the extraordinary revenues that appear to be generated on that particular stretch of road.

In none of those 3 cases are reasonable standards or good faith used to determine whether a ticket should be issued. I therefore have no choice but to conclude that ticketing me was purely an act of profit-taking. Congratulations Mr. Policeman on a rogering of, well, typical cop proportions. $150 out of my pockets. Well done. Hell, if I could screw someone out of $150 so fucking easy I’d sure be a rich guy. But of course that is not one of the pleasures of life that are open to me. I do not have a badge and gun, which is pretty much what you need to operate this sort of racket. Really, I earnestly say “kudos” to you for mastering your “craft” to the extent that you have. Bravo. Félicitations.

Will I pay the fine? Of course I will. I really don’t have any choice at all in the matter. I’ve been driving for about 5 years without a single infraction, but obviously there is nothing I can do to shield myself from a policeman who’s tossed a coin and decided that I was going to be the poor sucker to get screwed. I can either take the $150 rogering I already have, or go to municipal court and risk getting a $300 rogering just for contesting the ticket. I wouldn’t put it past the local bench. Since the police station at which the ticketing officer is stationed is about 5 blocks away from the municipal court there is practically no chance that he wouldn’t appear in court, and since my word as a private citizen is considered shit compared to a cop’s there’s absolutely no point challenging it.

I AM pissed off, though, and frankly there’s really nothing that can happen that won’t make me any less pissed off about this scam. Identity theft is an epidemic in Canada, and yet the moment you show up at the doorstep of the Montreal Police with clear case of identity theft — including fairly extensive evidence that could easily be used to track the perpetrators — the first thing they tell you is that it won’t do any good. Then they start sending you from one station to the other, with the hope that you’ll just go away and not bother them anymore. I’m speaking from personal experience here. The cops promised nothing when I went to them, and they’ve delivered plenty of that. If I want to thank someone for helping me get that mess resolved, it’s my bank, who were a hell of a lot more helpful than the people who are supposedly responsible for solving and preventing crimes. It’s fucking sad, frankly. On the other hand they’re always up for a traffic bust which is at best questionable and at worst dishonest, or to shut down some unattended pot growing operation.

Not too hard to find a pattern there is it.