Like you and me, only better
Blake notes:
Clay Palmer, a college student who honked his horn at a police officer, had his ticket reduced to a warning in Chatanooga (sic). The student was honking in protest to the officer turning on his blue lights to go through a traffic light only to turn them off after he went through. Palmer was charged with violating the city’s noise ordinance.
I realize and appreciate the need for officers to occasionally and in the course of duty to be able to disregard some traffic laws. But that doesn’t appear to be the case if he turned around just to get some guy for being a smart ass. If they’re not in pursuit, they should abide by traffic laws for the safety of others. If he’d ran that light and caused an accident, that would be inexcusable.
February 24th, 2006 at 10:45 am
Ah…I misspelled Chattanooga.
February 24th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
I grew up with a state trooper as a neighbor, one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet. He told about a time when the State Patrol decided to actually enforce the laws regarding running with lights and sirens (Code 3, I believe he said). If they saw a local (city, county) PD or emergency vehicle running with their lights on they’d call dispatch to find out if anyone had called in a “code 3.” If not, then they would pull them over and give them a ticket. The law was (and likely still is), if the officers weren’t on an official call which had been radioed in to dispatch then they had NO special privileges to break the traffic laws. He said they gave out dozens of tickets to local LE in just a few weeks.
This started quite a feud between the locals and the state, which apparently lasted quite a few years.