Woman off hook over bumper sticker

[cal04]

Bashing President Bush will not cost an Athens woman $100 after all. Denise Grier, who was cited in DeKalb County for her "I'm Tired of All the BUSH—" car decal, has had her case thrown out. "We couldn't prosecute it," DeKalb Recorders Court Chief Judge R. Joy Walker said because Georgia's lewd decal law was ruled unconstitutional in 1990. Walker said a letter of dismissal was mailed to Grier's home last week.

Police Sgt. R.S. Caviness pulled Grier over on Chamblee Tucker Road about 9:30 p.m. March 10, according to police records obtained under Georgia's Open Records Act. He issued her a ticket for $100. The portion of the Georgia code that Caviness cited on the ticket prohibits on vehicles "any sticker, decal, emblem, or other device containing profane or lewd words describing sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body." However, the Georgia Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional in 1990, ruling it violated the First Amendment right to free speech.

That court decision is noted in current printed versions of the Georgia code, but Caviness said Tuesday it did not show up on a computerized version he had accessed from his patrol car when he wrote the ticket. He noted the court decision also isn't shown on the version of the Georgia code posted on the Georgia General Assembly's Web site. When he learned about the ruling, Caviness said, he went to Walker and asked the judge to dismiss the case. Attempts to reach Grier for comment about the dismissal were unsuccessful.

Grier's story appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week and quickly circulated on the Internet, drawing reaction from around the country. Last week, Grier, 47, said the case was about her right to free speech. "The officer pulled me over because he didn't agree with my politics," she said. But Caviness said Tuesday he "didn't even realize it was a political sticker." He said he just noticed the final four letters. "I wasn't even going to write a ticket," Caviness said. "I was just going to tell her it's not setting a good example for children." He said Grier interrupted him and said, "Just write me a ticket." So he went to his car and looked up the code section, Caviness said.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/dekalb/stories/0405ticket.html

[Twist_U_Up]

1. What a load of shit

Caviness said. "I was just going to tell her it's not setting a good example for children."

Perhaps he should tell the kids that being of age to join the military under the bush regime is not good for their health either.

[MADem]

3. Completely--a load of BULLSHIT!! He was doing it because he COULD

And if he KNEW there was no law against it, as he infers, but only wanted to chastise her and impose his morality on her, then he stopped her without cause. She should SUE his ass, and sue the department, for harassment and emotional distress.

The police have come a long way since the dreadful era of the 60s and 70s, when they were "the PIGS" and "the FUZZ" and they were so HATED. No, DESPISED, REVILED...words can't express how much distrust there was of the thin blue line (or the fat, donut eating line). It seems to me, of late, that they are backsliding. I get the sense that there are more incidents like this, where heavy-handed clowns throw their weight around. It's not a good feeling.

But most importantly, the asshole couldn't spell. His dirty little peabrained MIND culled out the SHIT from Bushit--why didn't he see "Bush It" on that sticker? Let's hope former Japanese PM Takeshita never visits his area and is greeted with a welcoming banner...the dyslexic fool will probably cite someone for advocating the taking of a crap in public!!!

[Greeby]

4. Don't you mean a load of Bushit?

;)

[Twist_U_Up]

6. Japanese PM Takeshita

:rofl: :rofl:

[MADem]

7. Swear to JEEBUS...ya pronounce it TA-Kesh-TA

...but that is the way they translate it!!!!

[tlsmith1963]

18. I Watch Anime a Lot...

...& that *is* the way they pronounce words like Takeshita (Ta-kesh-ta). When I started watching anime, I was so embarrassed to find out how many Japanese words I had been saying wrong.

Tammy

[electropop]

12. Matsushita, Shitzu, Shiitake, Shiite...

That guy would lose his lunch in Japan. :eyes:

[radfringe]

24. wonder how many tickets he wrote

for people with "BUSH-cheney" bumper stickers?

meanwhile...I sort of got a kick out the article -- by issuing the ticket - the Officer has now officially made BUSH a 4-letter word...

[tenshi816]

2. I'll just bet he wasn't going to write her a ticket.

The likelihood of a Georgia police officer pulling someone over just to give them a lecture about a bumper sticker is about the same as me piloting the space shuttle. I speak as someone who grew up there.

He should have to pay Grier's legal fees.

[darkmaestro019]

5. We got pulled over in GA.

Granted, the driver was going like 90, and we deserved a ticket. But the officer made us drive TO THE POLICE STATION--tried to make ME drive, but I had only JUST gotten my DL and NEVER EVER driven on a highway, nor was I on the driver's insurance. He doesn't care. He says the license is "suspended" until we pay the fine and that I have to follow him to the station while the driver rides in the patrol car with him. I had to essentially beg him not to make me. He took the driver's entire wallet as, like ransom, and let him drive.

He made us pay almost $400 in cash. Exact change. At like three in the morning, so getting some from a store would've been difficult at best--this is the middle of NOWHERE, nothing but the police station. and NOW that we're THERE he refuses to let me even TRY to drive to a whatever to get change BECAUSE I'm not on the insurance, though he didn't care about that a minute ago. We happened to have almost exactly that much in cash for the trip, which was clearly obvious in the driver's wallet he had to hand over. Coincidences are so amusing!

I had to go back to the car and pray to all the gods and dig for change to get whatever the tail end was. It was some insane thing like $383.78 that he decided to charge us. I went into my own wallet and had a five, which he wouldn't take to total 385. "Exact change or he stays in jail." Since when do speeding tickets end in loose change? I found a couple of ones in my luggage in some pants, and enough nasty sticky pennies in the various nooks in the car to pay it, otherwise I'd have been stranded in a strange state and unable to drive, and unable to even STAY in the car because they were going to impound it. Because they wouldn't take an extra dollar something. And we got no receipt. I wonder where the money went? I'm sure they put it right into the account where fines are supposed to go. Aren't you?

[mark11727]

11. Was this on I-95, because that highway really FLIES...

...and I think the "exact change only" deal is BULLSHIT.

Was this the same cop from the original incident, also did the booking and the cashiering?

Nice little racket that good ole boy's got for hisself. :grr:

[darkmaestro019]

15. Sure was. i-95.

They wouldn't let me go INTO the tiny police station, but the driver has been a friend for about a decade and he said it was only that one guy and sort of a secretary and that nobody else was visible or around in the building.

[tenshi816]

20. So you were in south Georgia then,

because I-95 only runs through that part of the state. When I was little, my dad used to say that south Georgia traffic police were far worse than the ones in north Georgia. We used to go to Florida a couple of times a year and he was extra cautious once we got below Macon.

[darkmaestro019]

21. Yep. We were coming from Jax/St Aug

and had to cross that little corner.....unfortunately all my family lives in FL so it's sort of impossible to avoid that horrible stretch of road. Or I could fly, but that has its own horrible fascist problems, as we all know.

Incidentally, the stretch of 95 between Jax and St Aug--I had to drive it twice daily to commute to work for almost a year--is supposedly the most dangerous piece of road on that highway. Not related, lol, but all in all when we can take something other than 95, we do. A1A is pretty good--slower, but a more pleasant drive all around when you can make the switch.

[tenshi816]

22. AIA's definitely a better alternative.

I'm OK with slow. :-) My dad was nearly killed in a car crash when I was 9 as the result of driving too fast and I remember it well.

I lived in Fernandina Beach when I first left home in Atlanta because I had always wanted to live in Florida. I rented an old beach apartment, not one of the new monstrosities the property developers threw up there, and had relatives in Jacksonville so I used to know the area pretty well. It's my favorite part of Florida and unfortunately a long way from England, where I am now.

[tenshi816]

14. If you had out-of-state plates on the car,

you were prime targets. What an awful story, and I think we know the answer to the question you asked at the end.

I've been pulled over in Georgia for the stupidest things, like this:

1) going 22 MPH in a 20 MPH zone,

2) not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign at a deserted intersection at 2 a.m. (and how disappointed the officer was that I clearly wasn't drunk or stoned, because that's what he expected at that time of night),

3) driving slowly down a road looking for my uncle's new house that I had never been to before (again, obvious disappointment that I was sober),

4) driving 38 MPH in a 35 MPH zone.

On another occasion, I was leaving I-285 (the circular highway around Atlanta) on a rainy day. I was going an appropriate speed - I've never been a speed demon, not ever - and my car hydroplaned suddenly, spun around and landed in a shallow ditch facing the wrong way down the exit ramp. Both the car and I were unharmed and I got out to walk to a pay phone to call the AA to pull my car out of the ditch and turn it around the right way. While I was gone, another driver came along, did the same thing I had done, and her car landed exactly on top of my car, completely crushing it. When I got back to my car (until then being completely unaware of what had happened in my absence), the police arrested me for leaving the scene of an accident where people were injured. It was only after I had been taken to the police station that the arresting officer stopped shouting at me long enough to listen to the complete story and get confirmation from the woman in the second car that I not only had nothing to do with her accident, I wasn't even there at the time. The policeman's attitude was "oops", but he never said sorry and refused to take me back to my ruined car to get my wallet, so I was stranded at the police station with no way to get home. I was only 19 at the time, and it didn't do much to make me feel charitable about the Georgia police force.

I'm so paranoid driving whenever I'm back there now, because I know that if I get stopped driving with a UK license, I'll probably be hauled off to the station as a potential terror suspect or something.

[darkmaestro019]

16. Sounds exactly like the sort of attitude I encountered....

And we had Florida plates. We were heading to NJ at all possible speed; a dear friend had called me begging me to come get her, she was pregnant and her boyfriend was determined to alter that fact.

No excuse for speeding, but in the driver's defense, he wasn't driving that way for fun, and the road was pretty empty at that hour so we weren't particularly endangering innocents, I would say.

I'm sorry about your car--and again, with the stranded! At the time (Now I am post-transition but pre op, trans--I'm a boy for all social purposes now, not quite as dangerous feeling...) I was a female, and I am TINY. Like, five nothin, 100 soaking wet, and reasonably cute, I'd guess. And I'd have been alone and homeless and with the $5 he wouldn't take to my name. In the middle of the NIGHT. I suppose he could've gone in and right back out and picked ME up for vagrancy, was the idea. Why on Earth would they want someone stranded anywhere to walk across a whole city? That's sort of asking for even more trouble. What happened to serve and protect?

The only place almost as bad was West Virginia. My current fiancee and I got stuck in what we'd thought was a parking lot while trying to turn around. It turned out to be mud. We were in a moving van that contained everything I owned. We were deeply relieved when a policeman stopped--until he made us WALK UP TO THE HOUSE of the owner of the MUD, whom he apparently knew, I guess, up half a mountain in the middle of the night in pouring rain, and ask if she wanted to charge us for property damage. Needless to say she was not keen on two gothy-queers banging on her door. Once she figured out what we were saying she looked at us like we were crazy. I was offering to fix the "damage" for her if she'd lend me a shovel or a rake. She said "I think I'll let you go this time," lol. She was nice.

Cops. (sigh) I can't watch the show on TV anymore, even. Paranoid is right! When in WV or GA we drive like grandmas, now. And I won't spend a dime in either state if I can help it. If we need gas or snacks in WV especially we get them before we cross the line or after we get out of the state.

[Solly Mack]

8. so he claims he stopped her just to lecture her?

LMAO

He didn't know the law...he didn't like the bumper-sticker...so he stops her to lecture her on his opinion about her bumpersticker?

What a pompous ass.

Like he was doing her a favor "I wasn't even going to write a ticket"

lolololol

Shouldn't cops be required to know the law? to stay current of the law? I mean, wouldn't that help just a little bit if they did?

So, he was either ignorant about his own job - OR - he knew the law and stopped her anyway.(so he could lecture her on his opinion)

Neither option arouses feelings of safety and security in me. Neither option fills with me trust.

but that's just me

[boobooday]

9. So it was pure harrassment

The cop didn't know the law had been struck down?

Right. He just got away with harrassing a citizen based on her political views.

[Warren Stupidity]

10. "BUSH—" ? Since when is that a dirty word.

Is Shittake a dirty word too? Would the newspaper spell that 'Sh__take'?

[AndyA]

13. Police Sgt. Caviness is an ASSHOLE

A loose cannon. Better get him off the streets and behind a desk job before someone gets hurt. If he isn't familiar with laws that have been on the books for 16 years, he shouldn't be out enforcing them.

I would bet he's just another right wing Kool Aid drinker, distressed because the phony little kingdom they've been building is falling down.

[MADem]

17. Sounds like a great title for a website!!

Either that, or Police Sgt. Caviness is a BULLSHITTER! Sign the petition today!! Hell, he'd probably hunt us down...!!! :evilgrin:

[Neil Lisst]

19. Yeah, be a fascist in front of the kids, teach them about ORDER

and police who use their power to enforce their personal opinions.

This guy was preaching to the mother about her politic and personal choices. How far is getting this lecture for a pro abortion sticker?

[NVMojo]

23. what an incredible amount of BUSHIT!!!!

[baby_mouse]

25. What he was GOING to do is IRRELEVANT.

One is judged on what one DOES, policeman...

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[Vidar]

26. Good for her.