Repeat Offender

I had a run-in with my first repeat offender last week. I pulled over a truck because its license plate was not visible. I asked the driver for his license, registration, and insurance. As I got back into my patrol car to run his information, the picture on the license seemed very familiar. Then, I remembered writing a ticket to this kid several weeks ago for rear-ending another car. He never went to court so his drivers license was now suspended.

I confiscated the license, issued a CRIMINAL ticket for driving on a suspended license and asked him if he remembered getting a ticket from me last time. He replied, "Yeah, I tried to go to court......." and that was it -no explanation of why he was unable to get to court. I told him that this time, failure to appear in court would result in a warrant for his arrest. It was nice to be the one to 'enforce' my own minor traffic ticket by issuing a criminal one for failing to take care of the first one.

On Friday, just before the end of our shift, my partner and I pulled over a 80's Cadillac with three young men in it for having a bad license plate. As my partner was talking to the driver, he suddenly drew his gun and yelled, "Get out of the car -NOW". I was standing at the passenger's door and drew my weapon too. I didn't know what was going on yet but pulled the two passengers out of the car. We handcuffed all three of them and conducted a quick 'pat-down' to make sure they didn't have any obvious weapons. My partner then reached into their car and pulled out a handgun that was pushed down into the seat near the driver. He then found a shotgun in the trunk. We ran a check on the men and the guns and everything turned up okay (guns not stolen, men not wanted). We were about to release all three of them when a plastic baggie containing a green leafy substance believed to be marijuana (that's how we document this in our reports) fell out of the passenger's pant leg onto the ground. So, we arrested the guy with the marijuana and let the other two go (after locking the unloaded weapons in their trunk). The arestee turned out to be a City employee which requires all kinds of extra paperwork to be completed.

The ironic part is the license plate was perfectly good. The MVD had mistakenly listed it as being invalid which was the whole reason for our traffic stop. Sicne we rely on the information provided by MVD, our traffic stop was valid -and so is the arrest.

I'm supposed to go solo next week but my sergeant has moved it up to Thursday. My trainer is in a class and instead of finding a new trainer, my boss feels I'm ready to hit the streets on my own.