Postmod Squad
Pqstmqd Squad Afriend once told me that the surest way to avoid a speeding ticket is to have your license and registration ready for the cop by the time he shows up at your car window. Police...
...Sounded like good advice to me, and I kept it in mind when a Virginia state policeman pulled me over on a highway outside Washington last fall...
...But now they get lectured at, too...
...But I just couldn't bring myself to give it...
...Between my college graduation and my last couple of speeding tickets, something dramatic happened to the way cops talk...
...The cop looked irritated, and I wound up with an enormous ticket...
...Backwards...
...Reaching through the window, I handed him the documents, trying to look both contrite and friendly...
...I thought, feeling totally confused...
...Domestic violence is a disease...
...Then they turned off the heat in the car, rolled down the rear windows, and drove around the snow-covered city for an hour and a half until his feet turned blue...
...I should have remembered all of this last week when a cop pulled me over for speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike...
...If the car in front of me drove off a bridge, I said, I would too, right through the guard rail and over the edge...
...If the car in front of you drove off a bridge, would you follow it...
...He ignored my offering...
...But I didn't...
...My first encounter with the police couldn't have taken place any earlier than 1986, and I'm certain that the three Florida sheriff's deputies who searched my car for beer didn't make a single reference to anxiety, repressed emotions, or rage-related syndromes of any kind...
...I was only following the flow of traffic, I explained lamely...
...That's a learning disorder, Ocif-er...
...the cop demanded...
...On Cops, everyone in uniform sounds like a candidate for a master's degree in social work...
...I'm not very old, but even I remember when cops didn't sound like daytime-talk-show hosts...
...And rooting through the glove box ahead of time might prevent the unfortunate mishaps that can occur when motorists make sudden, unexpected movements around people with guns...
...some burly sergeant will say to a sobbing woman in a housing project as patrolmen stuff her drunken boyfriend into a squad car...
...The effect on society, he explained gravely, can be devastating: "A lot of people die from it...
...Tucker Carlson...
...The cop explained...
...As I remember, they called me "boy...
...A smalltown constable who tunes in to Cops Friday nights is apt to notice that his big-city counterparts don't bear much resemblance to the guys from Adam-12...
...The fine came to more than $100...
...Instead, I foolishly blathered on about how I wasn't angry or frustrated at all, just late for lunch downtown...
...New Age policing can be annoying, but it can also come in handy if you know which buttons to push...
...But at least I didn't have to hear the lecture...
...The cops responded by threatening to smash his cheekbones...
...It was...
...Apparently, on the way to the station, my roommate did mention something about his "rights...
...I saw the way you passed that station wagon back there...
...Police officers appreciate the courtesy, he explained...
...I knew the right answer: "Wow, I never thought of that," or even, "That's an excellent point...
...Around 1989, one of my roommates decided it would be amusing to uproot every Stop sign in the neighborhood and throw them into the back of his car...
...Nor had attitudes in the law-enforcement community become any more progressive by the time I got to college in the late-'80s...
...Road rage, he said, is when a driver suffers a loss of emotional control, owing to pent-up anger, anxiety, and frustration, and projects his hostility onto other motorists...
...Again, not a word about feelings...
...Let me ask you something," he said...
...For a moment, I had the sensation of being trapped in a bizarre version of the Sally Jesse Raphael Show, a version where Sally Jesse is a 6'3" steroid-head in sunglasses with a yard-long flashlight on her belt...
...There wasn't a lot of emotive banter as the cops led my roommate away handcuffed and barefoot...
...The alphabet...
...Spooked, the cop let him go on the condition he get off the highway as soon as possible and find a place to sleep off his disability...
...Get some help, do you understand me...
...He nodded, as if responding to a particularly slow child...
...People still get arrested, of course...
...And it might have been amusing if the signs hadn't been piled up in the driveway when a police car passed our house at 5:00 on a Sunday morning...
...A friend of mine once escaped a drunk-driving arrest by claiming protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act...
...Ever heard of road rage...
...That was classic road rage...
...At that point, I probably could have beaten the ticket by promising to seek intensive outpatient counseling for my road rage...
...A classic symptom of road rage...
...No way, he explained to the cop, "I've got dyslexia...
...My guess is, documentary-style police shows have a lot to do with it...
...I could see the disappointment in the cop's eyes: Denial, he was thinking...
Vol. 3 • April 1998 • No. 32
