Court goes like this:
Judge: Officer state your name, department and badge number. Were you working on march 4, 2012 in the village of ****? Where you running radar at location ****. What did you see? At what point did the vehicle break your radar beam? How fast was it going? Did you test your radar at the start of shift and after this stop? Did this all happen in the county of *** Village of ****?
Defendent: I wasnt speeding!
Judge: Guilty, please step over to the clerk and pay the fines plus court cost.
Me: Thanks for the overtime!
Or court can go a different way:
Cut and pasted from another thread.
Officer did his canned rehearsed speech about how he found me to be exceeding the speed limit and presents the current calibration records to his radar gun just as they are trained to do. Judge ask me if I dispute any of this. Yes your honor I am going to dispute that he was not using methods he was trained and expected to use in the field. Judge paused and raised his eyebrows a bit and said "alright Mr Gibbs I'm going to see where this one goes".
My turn to defend myself. Officer, do you consider yourself literate? Yes was his response. Smug look on his face. Have you passed High school math I ask? Yes he said. Again the look. Judge already is starting to get irritated with me. Your honor I will present as evidence the training manual on proper speeding violation stops. The manual in which he read and claims to understand and has been signed off on as being properly trained. He has admitted to being literate and I will be using some basic high school math in my defense so I want to make sure he can't say he doesn't understand my defense questioning. Judge allowed it.
Hand out copies of the training manual to judge and officer.
Officer if you turn to page 12 and read us the first step in determining a speeding vehicle it says what? Officer will obtain a visual confirmation of speed of vehicle before employing use of any other measurement devices.
Officer did you do this? Ummmm yes of course I did. Alright officer, tell us how you visually established my speed. I observed you in traffic and estimated your speed to be higher based on using a fixed point of reference. (His training manual response). Excellent officer. And what was that fixed point? It was the lamppost on the corner of 3rd Ave as you passed it heading north. That is fine officer. And for how long did you visually track me to determine my speed. About 3 seconds? About 3 seconds officer? Was that about 3-5 seconds or 2-3 seconds. I don't know exactly how long but I'd day 3-5 seconds. Fine officer. No lets talk about your radar gun. You were using a handheld Stalker unit correct? Yes (He began to straighten up his spine right on the spot). Great so how long do you estimate it took you to raise the unit to begin measuring me? Oh I don't know about 3 seconds. Judge interrupts. You are badgering the officer. Your honor if you refer to the training manual it states the proper engagement of a hand held device and the officers responsibilities. (Cop is now reading that section like mad to anticipate my questions. It won't matter anyway). Your honor I want to establish if he in fact did use the trained methods as he is sworn to do. OK I'll allow it but this better get somewhere quickly. Just about 3 more should do it your honor.
So officer what is the prescribed time to correctly engage that unit on your target and ensure a proper reading making sure there are no panning errors. (How the hell does he know what a panning error is?). 4 seconds. OK officer so we have 4 seconds plus and estimated 3 seconds it took you to raise the gun and lock in on me, plus your estimate of 3 seconds give or take a second to visually verify my speed before that. Correct? Yes. OK officer do you wish to re-think any of your answers you have given thus far. No. OK fine so we are all certain that you are testifying 10 seconds at least correct? Yes. Now then officer where did you pull me over? I pulled you over just after Knights Ave on the eastbound side heading north. That is correct officer I have no dispute there and am in total agreement. Was I slow to pull over or did it take awhile for me to. No you pulled right over. Thank you officer. And did you find me cooperative and prepared with all my documents? Yes. Was I polite and prompt? Yes. Thank you officer.
Officer do you know the distance between the lamppost on 3rd Ave and Knights Ave. No I don't. I don't really care. Since you are trained to visually judge distance you can estimate it with a pretty high degree of accuracy right?right? Yes. OK give us your estimate. 250 feet was his resonse. Your honor I'd like to present into evidence the traffic engineering documents held at the city that shows this stretch of Highway 1 in which I was traveling north on. The judge is beginning to take some interest now. So we have no dispute, does everyone know how to read the key that shows how much distance per inch? Officer if you need any help I can show you. (My turn to demean him some now). I have this calculator and ruler you can use if you'd like. I held them out. Judge sort of smiled and the rest of the people waiting in court started laughing. Officer refused them.
OK then I have measured this and submit that the distance between the lamppost and the point I was pulled over was 312 feet. Everyone wanna check that info. Judge actually did ask for a ruler. He took a minute and agreed. He said I don't know about the 2 feet but I will agree you've done your homework enough to say its probably right on. I paced it off with a roller ruler to make double sure your honor.
OK now to save time and all sorts of calculators being used, I'd like to submit a spreadsheet that uses simple high school math to show an object traveling at various speeds and what distance they would travel. It will save us all a lot of work and calculating as we go. It shows my formulas in easy to understand high school terms. The formula is (D)istance =(S)peed divided by (T)ime. Judge allows it and I gave the baliff the spreadsheets to hand out.
Now officer you originally wrote on my ticket that I was traveling at 52 MPH correct. Yes. And you did me a favor by writing it up at 45 to "help me out" right? Yes. OK officer using the concept of division which you claimed to have passed in high school do you feel you need any help in understanding this spreadsheet? If you'd like to check my work using a calculator to make sure there is no errors (as I again held out the calculator). Do you feel you'd need any help in using a calculator (My turn to treat him like he treated me on the side of the road)? Of course he says no. By now he isn't going to fall for anything I offer. In fact I made the first line easy. 60 MPH = 88 feet per second. Multiply 88 times 60 seconds and we get 5280 feet or one mile. Follow along officer? He is showing signs of being visually pissed about now.
Now officer lets look at 52 MPH. Go ahead find it there on the spreadsheet. The little square that has a 5 and 2. At 52 MPH I'm traveling at 76 feet per second, correct? Yes And as you testified you took 10 seconds to verify my speed as trained correct. Yes (He can't back out now). So at 52 mph how many feet have I traveled in 10 seconds. Ummm it says 763. His face is getting red now. Now officer since you did me a favor let me ask you to do me one. Lets look at 45 and see how far I went in 10- seconds. The answer 660 Feet.
Now officer if Knights Ave. was 312 feet from the time you saw me speed to the time you pulled me over, and none of us are disputing that as fact, how is it that I am doing 45 let alone 50. No answer. Now officer look in the time column there and see what speed it says I was doing if I traveled 312 feet. It says 20 at 300 feet he replies. So officer is it safe to assume that you being literate and having passed high school that 312 feet would be closer to say 22-25 than it would be 45-52. No answer. Do you need my calculator officer? More laughter from the people waiting their turn. He stood there with the veins on his forehead now showing and throbbing. Your honor do you have any questions for me? Mr. Gibbs are you saying you were doing 25 MPH and disputing the officers accusation. Your honor I believe I was doing 30 to 32, but it appears by the officers testimony that I was actually doing more like 25 so I guess I will say I am disputing any speed he claims I was doing as we have already used the facts as he presented them to disprove I was doing anything close to 45. The judge pondered a bit. Your honor do you have any more questions for me? Mr Gibbs do you realize that you have to ask for a case to be dismissed? No your honor I did not. The judge said Mr. Gibbs do you have any questions for me? At this time I would request a dismissal. Request for dismissal approved.
End of cut and paste.
This took hours of my time to prepare for. The courts are there to listen and judge by the facts, lack of facts or evidence or lack of. The cops have done this about 500 times so they give the trained responses and rarely expect an actual defense by us dumba**es on the road.
the ones that go to court are USUALLY the ones with bad attitudes? its ppl like you that go to court cause you think ur smarter then the cop. your not. which is why you've been cited so many times and been to court. its not rocket science. now were using the word "ONLY"? go back and read what I said. I said "USUALLY".
