HAIRSHIRT
Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery
|
HAIRSHIRT Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery |
|
Tuesday, November 28, 2006Like Night Court, But in the Daytime
A couple of months back, I had a fun, fun interaction with New York's Finest. I was out with my dogs for their Ten O'Clock Walk, a nightly trek that always makes me wish I lived in the fucking suburbs and could just shunt them out to the backyard to crap without my supervision. A cop car pulled up and a couple of officers got out. They came over to me and the lady cop said, "We've had some children in the neighborhood bitten by dogs. Are your dogs licensed?"
Fortunately, I took a class in Beginner's Cop back in college, so I was able to translate this into something roughly along the lines of, "I need some bullshit tickets to make my monthly quota and I intend to force your assistance in this matter." Unfortunately, despite my wife's repeated requests earlier that week for me to put the tags on our dogs, I'd forgotten, and so was forced to lamely beg the cop to let me go up to our apartment for proof that our dogs were, in fact, kosher with the city. She was a grumpy cop, though, and wasn't having it. She took my license and left me standing on the sidewalk, holding a bag of shit. Naively, I figured, since she took so long, that she was running a check of some kind and would be back shortly with my license and an apology for having bothered me while a dozen or so crackheads went strolling by us. But, no. The lady cop never came back out of her car. Instead, she sent her partner out and he handed me two tickets for having unlicensed dogs. I protested to the guy cop, and he essentially shrugged and walked back to his car. I stomped back up to our apartment, cursing and kicking any bits of garbage unlucky enough to be lying in my path. My wife, the lawyer, shared my ire at this steaming pot of crap and put together a not guilty plea, which I sent off with all haste. Which is how I ended up in Courtroom Number 2 this morning, having had to take the day off of work and haul my ass downtown. The folks at the courthouse were pretty nice, all in all. A security gal pointed me in the right direction when I first got there, sending me to stand in a nice long line to sign in. (No visit to a New York City municipal office is complete without a nice long line to stand in.) The guy who took my summons and traded it for a pass to the courtroom was pleasantly indifferent, although he did repeatedly forget to turn on the microphone in front of him, causing me to call, "What?" several times. He finally remembered, but only after I'd put my ear right up to his window, and right by the speaker. Court was an interesting experience. It was kind of like a dozen episodes of The People's Court squeezed into an hour and a half. I saw a whole assortment of cases involving a broad spectrum of people. I have no idea how they really lump all of these cases together, but for some reason, my unlicensed dog case was about on par with reckless operation. Who knew? I saw two defendants on crutches. I assume their counsel advised them to try and be as pathetic as possible. (Mission accomplished in both cases.) I saw three separate men being charged with public urination. I hadn't realized they were prosecuting that one so vigorously. They should set up a stake-out on my block. A few people had their own lawyers, but most of us were represented by one of two public defenders to whom we didn't say one word before we went up to the judge. I was a little nervous, because the judge seemed to be really pissed at one of the counselors and I was afraid I was going to get her. I could easily imagine their animosity getting out of hand and my little fine snowballing into a life sentence after they got into a shouting match. In the end, I got off. This is, in part, thanks to my wise decision not to correct the bailiff when he mispronounced my name. I was a lot more anxious when I went before the judge than I thought I'd be. I guess this is because, despite the occasional rolling stop, despite the odd joint smoked here and there, I'm really a law-abiding citizen and the thought of actually being in trouble for breaking the law (even when I didn't fucking break it) is appalling to me. If I were ever actually sentenced to jail for something, I'm pretty sure I'd explode at the sentencing hearing.
|
|
|||
| . | |||||
