A Ticket Excuse

I was working at a house in a seedier part of town yesterday when a car whipped around the corner at what you could call a higher than usual speed. A police car with its lights on was right behind. As luck would have it a tow truck was blocking the street and the car’s driver was in what was essentially a dead end. He pulled over. The two policemen got out of their car and had the driver get out of his, leaving his passenger in place. The driver didn’t have a driver’s license with him so the police ran the car’s plate.

I think anyone who’s been pulled over has tried in one way or another to avoid the ticket: be nice, be sexy (harder for guys), be chummy, belligerent (usually the fall-back since it’s hard to intimidate a cop), empathetic, play stupid (for some folks this is being natural), or the whole Dale Carnegie thing. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn’t. The driver of this car tried a tact I’ve never even heard of.

“Are you James Bodin?” the cop asked.

“Yeah,” the guy said.

“Do you have anything to prove that?” The guy fished around in his pocket for a paper and handed it to the cop. It passed the proof test and the cop said,”Our records show your license has been revoked”

“No it hasn’t,” James said.

“Yeah . . .” the cop started.

“No,” James said, “I’ve never had one so how could they revoke it? They can’t revoke something I’ve never had.”

The exchange went on for a bit with James stating and re-stating that he couldn’t possibly be driving with a revoked license since he never bothered to get one in the first place.

It worked. The cops did not give him a ticket. The downside was that he had to leave the car parked by the curb and walk to wherever he was going. His passenger, who also didn’t have a license, had to walk too. It was cold that day and the policemen went back to their car to do paperwork while James and his passenger trudged up the street. In a few minutes James and his passenger were out of sight and the police had finished up and left.

Twenty minutes later James came back with his passenger. They got into the car, made a bootlegger U-turn and charged down the street. They only made it a few blocks when a police car with its lights on turned the corner. Same policemen, same police car.

I don’t know what tact James used this time but I don’t think it worked. At the end of this stop James got to ride in the back of the warm police car. His passenger still had to walk.