Brake Light

I was on my way to do volunteer work at a local school when I heard the wail of a police siren. I looked around to see where the noise was coming from and in the rear view mirror I could see flashing lights. So I pulled over to let the policego by, and lo and behold they were after ME!Two police officers jumped out of the patrol car and crept over, one on each side of the car. In the side mirrors, I could see them unbuckle their holstersand place their hands on their guns. Terrified, I kept my hands prominently on the steering wheel. One approached the driver's side door. He asked for my insurance card and driver's license. When I reached intothe glove compartment to retrieve the insurance info, the one near the passenger's side lifted his gun slightly out of the holster. I slowly removed the document. The first officertook the license and the insurance card and the two of them walked backwards to the patrol car, leaving me to wonder what on earth I had done. Did I run over a blind nun? Did I resemble a well-known pedophile? Was my license plate similar to that of an international terrorist?
Fifteen long minutes later, the first officer returned and handed me my two documents. He said "You have a broken brake light on the left side." "A broken brake light! Are you fucking kidding me? That was the reason you pulled me over? That was the reason you flipped open your holsters? That was the reason you nearly withdrew your gun when I went to the glove compartment for the insurance card that YOU asked me for, you ignorant asshole?" I wanted to say. But wisely didn't.
"I am going to have to write you a ticket," said the first officer, adopting a world-weary tone. "For a broken tail light?" I asked in disbelief. "It's only a Fit-It Ticket. It won't appear on your record. You installa new bulb, and take the car to the police station and show them you have replaced the light. They sign off on it. You pay an administration fee of ten dollars, and that's it." "Can't you just give me awarning and let me fix it." "We don't trust you," came the swiftand uncompromising reply. "So I am going to be penalized for having a broken brake light." "It is the owner's responsibility to check the brake light. You learned that when you took your driver's test (28 years ago). " "But what if I had checked it on Sunday and it was working, and then it burned out today?" "It is your responsibility to check it." "Every day?" "Whatever it takes." " But I can't check my brake light unless I am in the driver's seat pressing the brake and then I can't see the brake light. "Get a friend to help you." "Get a friend to check it with me every day?" "Whatever it takes." And he walked away handing me a ticket.
Had I just fallen down the "Rabbit Hole?"
So I went home and replaced the broken bulb, which took about two and a half minutes. Then I drove half an hour to the police station on Burbank as I was told to do. The officer therestated thatunfortunatelythey couldn't issue a release form, as they weren't an officialSheriff's station. I had come to the wrong place. I should have gone to the station IN Burbank not the one ON Burbank. So I drove another half hour to the Burbank police station where a very young, very overweightSherriff, with only a passing familiarity with English, inspected the vehicle. I was forced to ask him to repeat everythingtwice,as his speech was not only garbled butwas also practicallyinaudible.
After the inspection, I went through the usual metal detector (which sounded a loud alarm suggesting I was carrying ten pounds of TNT, when in fact the culprit turned out to be my belt buckle). I was then directed to the payment desk where I was ordered to pay a fifteen-dollar administration fee. (…in cash as they do not accept credit or debit cards) "But the issuing officer had told meit was only a 10-dollar fee," I whined.I wanted to plead my case with the girl at the payment desk but her command of English was less secure than the taciturn Sheriff's. She was in command of somethird language, one that was neither English nor Spanish. But she did give me a receipt and I went home and very quickly mailed it with yet another administration charge (ten-dollars this time)to yet another police station. I just wanted to be done with it.
ButI couldn't stop myself from regurgitating the situation and chewing on the cud of theunfortunate series of events that had led to this debacle. Not only was I being fined twenty-five dollars, I was now involved with three different police stations. And I kept thinking, these two original police officers,who had pulled me over in the most threatening manner were doing so knowing I only had a broken brake light. They then misledme about the administration fee and sent me tothewrong police station. If this is how they deal with an ordinary law-abiding citizen, how on earth would they react to real criminals? I began to wonder if perhaps these allegations of police brutality might not be true. How more inept, uncompromising, distrustful and misinformed could these men possibly be?But the unpleasantness had only just begun I was soon to discover.
So rattled was I by these terrible questions,that I suddenly realized I had forgotten to include my ten-dollar payment in the mail. So I called up the ThirdPolice Station and told them of my predicament. I asked if I could mail them a check with a copy of my receipt from the secondpolice station. "Oh no. You'll have to come to the Van Nuys Station or they will issue a warrant" (for my arrest I can only imagine). "All the way out to Van Nuys…past Oxnard….deep into the Valley!" I sighed to myself. Soon a stifling hot summer day, I drove out to the Court House in Van Nuys.
Just for the score sheet, let me point out that this is day three of the brake light incident, with me now visiting a third police station, afterseveral hours of driving with gas prices over four dollars a gallon, in an attempt to fix an easy to fix, "Fix-It ticket".
At the entrance of the Court House Complex, I was asked "Criminal or Civil?" "It's for a brake light," I stated, with barely masked impatience. "Civil" he barked, and returned to some fallen woman whose heart medication had caused her shortness of breath. And off I went to join a line-up that was about fifty people long. The folks in the line-up were mostlyHispanic,attempting to converse in shaky English with the black court clerks who werereplying inhigh Ebonics. "Axe me that again?" The exchange sounded like an international incident at the UN. Mercifully I discovered a nearby window with no line-up and asked the clerk about my ticket. He took my receipt and checked his computer. "It's not in the system," he noted and added:"How long ago did this happen?""Three days ago was the original arrest," I groaned. "You weren't arrested. You were given a Fix It ticket" "Fine, but then I forgot to include the ten dollar administration check. So can you take my money and give me a receipt?" He excused himself for five minutes and went to his boss who explained to him that he couldn't accept the money unless the ticket was in the system. "You'll have to come back." "When?" "When it's in the system." "When will that be?" "I don't know."
So here I am dealing with a law I cannot follow, aticket I cannot pay for (in an amount now more than double the original estimate), in a system that doesn't acknowledge me. So I guess they will eventually issue a warrant for my arrest. I will be tried and,given my luck,probablyconvicted of brake light failure; given the maximum sentence and sent to Fulsome prison for the criminally insane. So in case you're wondering;that's what I'll be doing this summer. Please look up that recipe for File Cake. I will notify youof the exact address where to send it at a later date.
Thank you.

B*