On our way to weekly Horsemanship lessons at Rocking M Stables off of Fair Oaks the other day, El and I were pulled over by a police officer. We had just turned from Walnut Hill onto Fair Oaks and were pulling into the stables parking lot when we suddenly noticed flashing lights right on our tail.
Unlike several months ago when I was stopped for speeding down Walnut Hill (rightly so) by a Constable, this was a DPD officer. This officer said she pulled me over because I had turned left after the light had turned red. I very respectfully said, ‘No Ma’am, the light was still yellow. I was carefully watching the light while cars came through, saw the silver Honda stopping while the light was still yellow, no other cars coming, and took that opportunity to turn’. She immediately corrected me and said, ‘NO. It was red’. Not wanting another $221 ticket, I shut my mouth. She then said, interestingly enough, ‘I’m not going to give you a ticket THIS time but I wanted to make sure everyone else saw me pull you over’.
Once the officer left us and we were getting out of the car, Elsa (smart girl that she is, she waited until the officer had gone) said, ‘Mama, the light was clearly yellow! Why did she lie? And why doesn’t she pull over the people going faster? And when she said she wanted other people to see, does that mean she wasn’t really doing her job so good?’
Out of the mouths of babes. I’m all for traffic enforcement, heck, I’ve been enforced and reformed. But I sure do wish that the enforcement was more intelligent. I’d like to see our traffic officers become a bit more selective and stop messing with us few good drivers and missing the many bad ones. It took some creative ‘splainin’ on my part to assure my nine year old that the police really are the good guys.
