South Carolina Cop Arrested for Reckless Driving and Disorderly Conduct

Charleston Police Officer Christine Phinney allegedly put up a big fight when being pulled over for speeding in her BMW on Christmas Eve. According to reports, she led police on a chase through the town of Summerville before finally pulling over. Once pulled over, she told a deputy sheriff that she was a police officer. Then she informed the cops that her husband was Dorchester County Sheriff's Lt. Tony Phinney. Incredibly, the arresting officers didn’t seem to be affected by her status at that point.  They then violated the unwritten police code of conduct: they actually enforced the law against one of their own!

A dashboard police camera shows the chase, and allows you to hear everything that was said during the arrest. That's when officer Phinney drops the bomb that every cop knows, but no sober cop says.  Phinney tells the officers in all candor that she’s pulled over other cops going 100 miles per hour and let them go because they were officers. 

“As long as they show me a badge, I don't care” she said. Surprised?  Don't be.  Speeding tickets are a complete and total scam.  Everybody speeds, but 99.999% of the time, cops, prosecutors and judges drive away with a warning after they are stopped.  You and I get ticketed and have to go to court where these dirtbags try to shame us into feeling guilty for exceeding the speed limit.

According to the tape, she wound up with a bloody lip after resisting arrest.  Phinney was ticketed for both reckless driving and disorderly conduct. Amazingly, she was released to go home, and never went to jail.  The resisting arrest charge was never filed.  Worst of all, you can hear the officer ask Phinney how much she had to drink that night on the tape, and his report indicated that she had "glassy eyes".  However, she was never given sobriety tests or charged with DUI.

Phinney should be thrilled with her luck.  Nobody else would get off without going to jail after this type of behavior.  It’s a shame she didn’t get charged with more after her actions. What a big disappointment for a police officer to behave this way.  And a bigger disappointment for the arresting officer to not have pursued the resisting arrest and DUI charge the way he probably would have if she hadn’t been a police officer.

Reports say Phinney was supposed to appear in court on Monday. She was granted a continuance by the court, and the hearing is now scheduled for late February. She faces up to sixty days in jail, fines, and points on her driving record.  Perhaps Phinney needs to receive the full 60 day jail sentence and the maximum fine.  She apparently admitted to allowing other officers to violate the law with no consequences, so one might think that her career in law enforcement should be brought to a quick halt as well. 

What lessons can her fellow cops take from this event?  First, if your fellow highwayman hits the party light, pull over immediately.  Second, be polite and cooperative to them throughout the process just as you want people treating you when you are harrassing them.  Third, you are probably being taped, so don't admit the big cop secret: that cops don't write each other tickets.  Finally, shut your big yap and don't act like a raging bitch when the officer is just trying to do his job.

Speeding Cop Kills Toddler in South Africa

A three year old boy was killed by a speeding cop in South Africa on Monday evening. According to reports, the boy had been walking with friends when he decided not to go further without adults. So he stood on the side of the road and waited for his friends to return. A speeding police van struck the little boy, leaving him dead.

Yaphi-Nowawa, the boy’s father said that he actually heard the crash that killed his son while he was driving home from work. He heard squealing tires and a “big bang”. A witness stated that he didn’t even believe that the cop tried to swerve and avoid hitting the child since the middle of his bumper was bent, and not the side. He stated that it was the worst thing he had ever seen, seeing the child’s skull split open revealing his brains. Paramedics arrived and pronounced the boy dead.

This was the third case involving a police vehicle killing a person in South Africa this year! And it’s only January. Seems that our country isn’t the only one that needs to tighten it’s reigns on cops who believe they are above the law. I wonder what the huge emergency was that the cop was rushing to…. And if it was really worth losing a child’s life over.

Top Traffic Cop Caught Speeding... Part II

To the left you can see a screenshot of an article printed in The Melbourne Leader in November.  The campaign targeted "dangerous" drivers, even calling those who break the laws “bloody idiots”, and the article featured top traffic cop Ken Lay in the photo. What’s interesting is that Mr. Lay received his own speeding citation in October.

He not only went to work every day enforcing laws that he hadn’t followed, but he went as far as to call those who break the laws idiots. In my opinion, this makes Lay the biggest bloody idiot of them all.  How much of a turd would you have to be to call people bloody idiots in the headlines when you yourself just got busted speeding?

The headline says that “you will be caught”.  Since Mr. Lay had finally “been caught”, that must have really made him believe that everyone else would be as well. I’ll bet that before his citation, he felt pretty invincible! The problem with speeding cameras is that cops don't get a break from their fellow highwaymen like they have in the past.  Instead of setting a good example and admitting his guilt showing that everyone makes mistakes, he hid the truth and went to work every day living a lie and even having a part in insulting would-be law breakers. Unbelievable.

Top Traffic Cop Rails Against Speeders, Then Gets Busted by Speed Camera

After keeping it a secret since before Christmas, Victoria’s top traffic cop, Ken Lay has admitted that he was caught speeding. He finally came forward, writing an article in the newspaper admitting his guilt.

He apologized and said that the reason he kept it a secret was because of the huge crackdown the force planned through the Christmas holiday to promote highway safety.

According to Lay’s own words, his chance of crashing increased by four times while he was speeding through the streets. Reports say he was going 83km/h in a sign posted 70km/h zone. That speed got him a $245 fine. He paid the fine, only confiding in Chief Commissioner Simon Overland, and convincing him that the ticket should be kept secret until after the holidays.

Lay says this was his first “blunder” in thirty-five years of driving.  That's almost certainly a lie.  What he probably means is that it's the first time he got caught and didn't get a wink and a nod from his fellow highwayman.  Reports say he was “let off” five years ago with a warning after speeding.  Mr. Lay did the wrong thing by keeping his offense secret. How was he able to go to work every day targeting “bad” drivers, when he, himself was in fact caught breaking the very laws that he’s paid to enforce? The public deserved to know. 

The only good thing about these speed cameras is that police find out what a huge scam they are perpetrating on people.  If the government really wanted people to drive the speed limit there would be an electronic speed limiting device on every car.  Many tractor trailers have them already because the owners refuse to get scammed any more.  Only an idiot would believe that safety is the reason for speeding tickets.  Revenue is the reason, and anyone who tells you different is a liar.

Life or Death, They Still Want Your Money… NOW UPDATED

Dr. Michael Kutryk, a hospital cardiologist, was stopped for speeding on his way to perform an emergency surgery in Toronto on Saturday. According to reports, Jeffrey Halstrom, a forty-seven year old kindergarten teacher was in the emergency room waiting for emergency angioplasty surgery to repair three clogged arteries while Kutryk was held up by the police.

Reports state that Kutryk told the arresting officer that he was in a rush to perform surgery on a man in cardiac arrest and that every minute counted. The officer chose to write him a ticket anyway. Luckily, Halstrom is now recovering at the hospital. But the outcome could have been much worse.

If the officer was so intent on writing the ticket, then why couldn’t he have escorted the surgeon to the hospital and written his precious citation when a life wasn't at stake? Why was the officer so intent on writing the ticket in the first place? He should have explained to Kutryk that he needed to slow down to prevent an accident that would hold him up even longer. Then he should have sent him on his way, wishing him well.

If this would have been the officer's off-duty co-worker, would the ticket have been so necessary?  Cops stick together, and the boys in blue have lined up solidly behind their cohort who wrote the citation.  According to this article, both 53rd Division Unit Commander Staff Insp. Larry Sinclair and Police Spokeswoman Const. Wendy Drummond stood by their fellow cop.  Some might say that this has made all three look like complete and total asswipes.  If speeding is so dangerous, why do the police violate the speed limit every time they apprehend a speeder?

UPDATE 1/13/2010 - It is now official: the Toronto Police are so desperate to avoid looking like complete and total horses' asses that they could not resist the urge to shoot off their big mouths again.  According to this update, Toronto Police spokesman Mark Pugash stated "This is an issue of public safety."  OK, wait a minute - does he mean the effort to ticket the doctor or the effort to get to a hospital and save a life? 

He followed this up by stating "If in the middle of winter you have someone driving at twice the speed limit, they present a risk to themselves and others."  It's hard to argue with that, but of course Pugash was attacking a straw man.  The doctor wasn't going twice the speed limit.  Pugash simply took the liberty of inflating the alleged speeding offense to make it sound more dire.  Further, he uses the intellectually dishonest technique of mentioning winter as if there was ice everywhere.  I just looked at some Toronto traffic cams and it appears that all roads are clear and traffic is flowing well.  So again, Pugash sacrifices credibility for sensationalism, making the Toronto PD once again appear to be nothing more than clowns.

Continuing this theme, Pugash "noted there are hundreds of doctors on call at any time in the city of Toronto who manage to obey the speed limits."  Huh?  He's somehow monitoring every doctor on call?  And what does that have to do with anything anyway?  We aren't talking about doctors on call, we're talking about doctors racing to the hospital in a life or death scenario where every second counts.  Again, this is intellectually dishonest.

Pugash saved his most preposterous claim for last.  He claimed to have "spoken to a number of doctors who believe that issuing Dr. Kutryk a ticket was the right thing."  WHAT?  Who?  Are we really supposed to believe that a bunch of doctors were consulted by the Toronto PD and they said "Yeah, when we are racing to save a life, you should pull us over, cite us, and let the patient's life hang in the balance."  Are they serious?  How much of a douche would you have to be to make this claim or to believe it?  Let me point out that prosecutors have Juris Doctor degrees from law school - I can only assume that these are the doctors he's talking about. 
 
At the risk of overstating the obvious, when you are right about something, you don't need *three* spokespeople to hide behind.  If you use one, your point could go either way.  Two spokespeople means you are taking a position that nobody agrees with.  Three is the equivalent of hoisting a 50 foot billboard that says "we're wrong and we know it, but in a desperate attempt to save face we are claiming that the Emporer does in fact have clothes and they are quite handsome." 
 
My challenge to Pugash and the other jackasses making statements in favor of this misguided cop: produce one (medical) doctor who thinks doctors should be ticketed on the way to life or death emergencies and have them post a comment saying so on this blog.  With so many to chose from as you have claimed, it shouldn't be hard.  If you concede that your entire department hasn't the first shred of common sense between you, do not respond to this blog.  Time will tell...