Order

My morning in court. Only one cop shows up - it's actually the cop that gave me the ticket, but thankfully he's here to deal with another case. Of the dozen other cases fully half were dismissed because the tickets weren't filed properly within 2 days of being written - at one point the judge comments that maybe they need to screen potential clerks better - and the other half were dropped because the cop forgot to check whether he was moving or not at the time of the radar reading on the ticket. Sadly mine was neither of those situations (lucky 13 I guess). Still, they struck a deal by which I pay the fine but it doesn't go on my driving record, costly but better than nothing.

The whole experience was kind of fun actually. Early on I met a nice older lady - a teacher - who had recently traded her suburban in for a little sports car and had since gotten 3 tickets in the span of 4 months. She likes to point out that she's a good driver otherwise. Several people don't bother even showing up for their hearing but that doesn't appear to matter, they're dismissed on one of the two previously mentioned technicalities. By far the most interesting moment though, was when another cop entered the court room followed shortly by 3 men in orange jump suits chained together.

It wasn't so much that we had shackled convicts in with us but the nature of the three. One was a balding middle aged white man, another was a tall young black man and the third was an evil looking midget asian man. Seriously evil looking. Like a henchman from a bond movie or bad kung fu film. Picture a tiny man who could kill you with his bare hands if he decided not to just will you to drop dead. I wish I'd had a camera