#Cops

As if tagging drivers in a questionable speed trap wasn’t enough, it is being alleged troopers in the Nutmeg State have falsified thousands of traffic tickets.

This is a weird one. And a bit confusing. Stay with us as we try to explain.

ABC7 in the San Francisco area has quite the story.

It involves a Batmobile replica, law enforcement, and cross-country travel. Oh, and taxpayer dollars.

The Supreme Court has ruled that police may order blood drawn from an unconscious person suspected of driving under the influence without a warrant. While that sounds like a possible violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches, justices in support of the practice claimed individuals consent to blood tests just by being on the road.

Their rationale? Wisconsin and a bunch of other U.S. states have laws that already make this legal and there’s a national precedent allowing for exigent circumstances. But let’s start with America’s Dairyland for some background.

Self-driving shuttle company May Mobility expanded its operations to include Rhode Island this week. The state agreed to pay the firm $800,000 for the first year of operations, allowing it to get its six-passenger micro shuttles running between an Amtrak station and downtown Providence as part of an ongoing pilot program.

However, one of the shuttles was pulled over just hours after entering service for a rather baffling reason.

As we hover around the fifty mile an hour mark in the right lane, the car ahead begins to wander again. First to the right, correcting sharply as they touch the rumble strip. Then to the left, as they overcorrect and wobble back across the center line. Suddenly, there’s a white flash to outside my driver’s door window. It’s some kind of late model Benz, burning up the passing lane Autobahn style. Not good.

One of these is the last Crown Victoria Police Interceptor made by Ford, now owned by the Kansas Highway Patrol

My brother got picked up at Parker’s, got him a ride in a new Crown Vic.
They said that he was movin’ on a federal level but they couldn’t really make it stick.
Never Gonna Change – Drive By Truckers

At a site where Panther love reigns, it should come as no surprise to the Best & Brightest that now that Ford’s Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, out of production since 2011, is gradually being taken out of service, law enforcement officers are wistful about the Crown Vic’s impending demise. A while back, the New York Times took a look at the last Crown Vic bought by the Washington State Patrol, assigned to Trooper Randy Elkins. “It’s kind of the end of an era. My goal is to keep it to the end, right to the last mile,” Elkins told the NYT. With about 1,000 miles put on the cruiser in a typical week and the WSP’s designated retirement mileage of 140,000, that last mile will come within three years.

As reported on KVAL:

A state trooper rolled his car multiple times while chasing two reckless motorcyclists, one of whom returned to taunt the injured trooper, officials said… As the trooper tried to close in on the fastest biker, he told Pratt (the spokesperson for the Washington State Patrol) that two other bikers cut him off. “Had he not slowed down and slammed on the brakes, he would have hit them,” Pratt said. “At his speed that made him lose control.” The trooper’s vehicle rolled several times, finally landing in a ditch alongside the ramp.

Clearly, it’s time for these “trained police drivers” to quit driving wayyyyy over their personal limits on public roads. To save lives, I am personally willing to fly to Washington State and teach their patrolmen how to avoid the deadly combination of inept braking and inept cornering.