Okay, here's how my son got out of a "following too close" ticket...When he went to court, he asked the judge to let him ask the officer a question, which he did. He asked, "When you pulled me over, did you suspect me of drunk driving?" The officer answered "yes" which invalidated the ticket and the case of dismissed. Now, you just ask that officer, in front of the judge, "When you pulled me over, was it because you noticed I wasn't wearing a seatbelt?" When he answers "yes", you get to turn to the judge and tell him that that's legal in your state! (Or you can just pay the $25 fine and not have to spend a day in the courtroom!!!!)

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"

I'm willing to bet that any cop only falls for that once.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

LOL Yeah, but if you're lucky enough to catch them on the first go around like my son did, you could save quite a few dollars!

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"

Indiana has what is called a 'primary offence' seat belt law, which means that police officers can stop and cite a driver or required passenger for a seat belt law violation alone.

Other states have 'secondary offence' seat belt laws, which means that police officers cannot directly stop a vehicle for a seat belt law violation but can issue a citation for a violation if the vehicle is stopped for another offence that constitutes a primary offence for stopping cars.

What the IN law does prohibit, though, as cited in the statute above, is police officers setting up road checkpoints for seat belt law enforcement. Many states authorise police checkpoints on roads for enforcing their vehicle codes, especially for the purpose of enforcing DUI/DWI/OUI laws. IN has decided to prohibit using that tactic for enforcing its seat belt law.

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Around 200,000 Irish immigrants served in the Union and Confederate armies in the American Civil War, often forming their own regiments and, at times, fought each other. At Fredericksburg, the Union’s Irish Brigade faced the Irish McMillan's Guards of Cobb's 24th Georgia entrenched in a sunken road behind a stone wall. Ordered to make a suicidal charge, it became one of the most famous events of the Civil War. The re-enactment portrayed in the movie Gods and Generals:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qVCxEupPag

Sounds like it was a slow day; nothing more...

A check of Indiana law I.C. 9-19-10-3.1 shows that as of July 1, 2007 the seatbelt law became a primary offence. So an Officer may stop a vehicle and issue a citation for this offense alone. After noticing you have not said anything about having your seatbelt on my guess is that you are guilty as charged. My advise for what it is worth would be pay the ticket and go on with your life. One of the first things my dad taught me was when your wrong take responsibility and learn from it. As for why all the officers I haven’t a clue.

well crap....well I didn't have much choice anyway...as M said - I either pay $25 or waste mine/judges/courts time trying fight it.
It just gets to me that they stopped traffic on a major 5 lane thoroughfare, and did a U-Turn to catch me...seems just a weeee bit overly enforced to me.

I would have tasered you!

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Success is measured in blood; yours or your enemy's.

You are a bad, bad, person, Iam! My second cousin's former roommate was killed by a pack of feral pit bulls...WHO WEREN'T WEARING THEIR SEAT BELTS, EITHER!

Oh sure, you may think it'll never happen to you, but the vast majority of people who get murdered are killed by other people not wearing seat belts!

You're a sick, evil man, and I hope you fry!

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"My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right." - Ashleigh Brilliant(?)
(Voting for None Of The Above, so far...)

no - Don't tase me bro!

Stop resisting!

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Success is measured in blood; yours or your enemy's.

My guess is that something else was up.

Common sense dictates that it doesn't require 3 trooper cars to stop and monitor a person for a seat belt violation. That's especially true given the absurd angles he must have seen you not having it, and it seems like a boatload of extra work to have gone through such hassles on the road to stop you. It's also a petty infraction compared to juicier ones on any given highway such as high speeding, etc.

It sounds to me by your description that you were on a major interstate. Troopers are often looking for many things on those, such as drug trafficking, etc. You mentioned you were driving a truck, one possible profile factor depending on the vehicle.


With profiling, cops routinely find some petty infraction to stop a vehicle, even though they really have another motivation for which they do not have reasonable suspicion to stop the vehicle. As the SCOTUS has held, that is a legal 'fishing' tactic so long as the reason for the stop was something that they could in fact cite as a vehicle code violation.

I see this routinely with drug and drunk driving cases where cops are stopping people for really petty stuff, such as one lightbulb out underneath a registration plate, etc. Everyone knows in the case what these cops are really interested in doing--stopping the car for any legal reason in fishing expeditions to see how many drunk drivers or drug dealers or purchasers can be caught.

It's also no secret that some cops also observe cars and things when stops occur and then claim that any violations they observed at the car stop were things they saw and were reasons they stopped the car. Things like seat belt violations, inspection and registration sticker violations, window tint violations, etc, are common.

Of course, it's illegal for police to fictionalise and/or perjure themselves in order to 'validate' what was in fact an illegal vehicle stop, but the obvious dilemma for defendants is that their word is put up against the cops when court time comes.

The vast majority of judges are biased towards law enforcement's testimony for legitimate and illegitimate reasons, and wind up just being rubber stamps for the cops' testimony as they find the cops' testimony and version of events credible as opposed to the defendants and rule in their favour on all credibility calls accordingly.

Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for judge's bias towards cops on credibility calls (defendants have a personal stake, they may be under the influence, etc). Other times it's illegitimate (judges have a political stake not to call law enforcement agents not credible when on the stand, they are often ex cops or prosecutors, etc). Many times it's a combination of both.

But, overall, the vast majority of cops just rubber stamp the cops' version of events. I've had so many cases where the facts alleged by a cop are so absurd that it only shows illegitimate bias to believe them. Worse, credibility calls are not appealable to a higher court for review, so a rubber stamping judge of absurd cop testimony is sealed from review.

What feels great, though, is where a jury at trial totally finds the opposite of the judge who earlier denied a suppression hearing by 'believing' trumped up absurd testimony and disbelieves the cops's absurdities when recounted or testified at trial.

I find that when juries believe the cop is BSing on things, they are likely to reject them as credible overall. They are like that with defendants and their witnesses too. On the whole, juries are much fairer than judges in a disagreement between defendants and cops as to what actually happened.

__________________
Around 200,000 Irish immigrants served in the Union and Confederate armies in the American Civil War, often forming their own regiments and, at times, fought each other. At Fredericksburg, the Union’s Irish Brigade faced the Irish McMillan's Guards of Cobb's 24th Georgia entrenched in a sunken road behind a stone wall. Ordered to make a suicidal charge, it became one of the most famous events of the Civil War. The re-enactment portrayed in the movie Gods and Generals:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qVCxEupPag

It sounds like your son had one of the 'good guys' on the bench who has little time for pretextual stops and wanted to send a message to the cop to relax on the pretextual stops. The hardliner judges I've experienced would have simply said the following too closely was a legitimate vehicle code violation to stop a car regardless of whether he was really fishing for a DUI and/or was a reason forming his reasonable suspicion for stopping the car for DUI.

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Around 200,000 Irish immigrants served in the Union and Confederate armies in the American Civil War, often forming their own regiments and, at times, fought each other. At Fredericksburg, the Union’s Irish Brigade faced the Irish McMillan's Guards of Cobb's 24th Georgia entrenched in a sunken road behind a stone wall. Ordered to make a suicidal charge, it became one of the most famous events of the Civil War. The re-enactment portrayed in the movie Gods and Generals:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qVCxEupPag

Well, stories like this make me glad I live in Massachusetts, the state with the lowest rate of issuing tickets.
I once ran a red light, looked over and saw a cruiser, and the cop just looked at me, extended his index fingers and rubbed them together. It's like he understood, I was running late, there was a detour, I didn't see the red light until I was in the intersection, I didn't have to tell him this, he knew, and he knew I knew I made a mistake, so get on with life. Boston cops are the best, when they are on their game, they are the finest public servants there are, and they walk that line so well, they always give you a hint at how to avoid the problem, and they are the most reasonable law enforcement people I've ever run into, if you decide to ignore the hint, and to be unreasonable, they can handle that too.

I haven't paid a ticket in decades, and when on occasion I do get stopped, they tell me what I did, and then move on.

Once, I was approaching an upramp to the expressway, and a guy cut me off, I had to jam on my brakes to avoid an accident.
There was a cop on foot on the upramp, and traffic was slowed down, but the cop couldn't stop the guy without messing up traffic, so as the guy approached the cop, the cop motions for him to roll down his window, and as he passes the cop, the cop shouts "you're an asshole", then he looks and me with a half smile and a shrug as I go by, as if to say "that's about all I can do", I thought it was brilliant.

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“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine.”

Senator Thad Cochran, Mississippi (R)
on McCain

“I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”
Senator Pete Domenici, New Mexico (R)
on McCain

“My anger did not help my campaign ... People don’t like angry candidates very much.”

McCain on McCain

The judge may have looked at the time of the ticket which was between 2:30 and 3 a.m. and decided that the cop truly was on a fishing expedition since he pulled my son over about a half a block or so from the bar. The cop had watched him leave the bar and I guess he thought he'd nail him! The stupid thing is that my son was just there helping my daughter close up and hadn't had a thing to drink and though he passed a field sobriety test, he was still taken to the station to blow. After all of that, the cop decided to give him a ticket for following too close. There was probably not even any traffic on the road for him to follow because even with a major increase in our population in Slidell, the road the bar is on is almost deserted when I close the at night!!!!

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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"