At 09:57 PM 11/12/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote:

A friend of mine tells an interesting story. On driving to a convenience store early in wee hours, he sees a man splayed across the hood of a parked car, perhaps dead. Being the good citizen he is he tracks down a police car and reports the incident. Instead of investigating the "body," the police decide to pull him over and write him $700 in tickets for various fictitous violations (all of which were later thrown out). He, as would any reasonable citizen, protested, not so much for the tickets, but for the possibility that the prone man might need medical attention. (The incident was not called in on the radio). He took the tickets and remarked something to the effect of, "I can't believe this is what one gets for trying to be a good citizen, trying to get involved." Officer's response: "Yep. Next time don't bother." Eventually, some 30 mintues later the police drive to the location and revive what was a sleeping bum, take my friend to the station and make him wake his wife to bail him out to the tune of $250 Total cost: $300 in legal fees to fight the "violations."

This story further confirms my lack of respect for Unicorn. While this story certainly teaches us to avoid contact with the police, it turns out that it ALSO shows that, ultimately, the current system is apparently set up to profit lawyers, police, judges, and other vermin. Those groups made out just fine as a consequence of the above incident: The cop(s) harassed a "safe" victim, rather than actually going out and doing their job. A lawyer got paid the money for, at best, merely ceasing the harassment the cops started. The judge made it all look "legal," although not proper, and could feel good about himself for (aside from collecting his paycheck) turning the victim loose. In short, the harassment wasn't UNDONE, it was merely STOPPED, for now. The cops had, in fact, succeeded in causing the victim to lose $300. Which, interestingly enough, was probably the point of the whole exercise. AP, on the other hand, would have fixed this problem, permanently. The cop would be dead, eventually if not immediately. The lawyer would be out of a job, as well as the judge. In practice, AP would have deterred all such abuse, which means that it would have succeeded where Unicorn's implicit recommendation ("get a lawyer") would have failed. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com