farmdevil.net

I did a little Google search a while back and found that, in addition to this site of course, Officer Johnson has one other notable mention. It seems that she found drugs on a guy during an illegal search a while back. Arresting a guy and having the court of appeals decide it was an illegal search must be a good source of embarrassment for a cop.

You can read the whole document here:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/iowastatecases/app/7-762.pdf

The best part is her testimony:

Q.  You had suspicion that it was drugs?

Johnson: Yes.

Q.  You didn’t have probable cause?

Johnson: Correct.

So not only is this funny because she was horrible on the stand, but it also highlights some pretty dishonorable police action. It raises the question of why she knowingly conducted an illegal search.

In other news, it seems a female police officer came to the neighbor’s house the other day looking for my roommate. It was probably Officer Johnson because I don’t think there are many other female officers in Ames. But it also seems likely that Officer Johnson would have been dumb enough to show up at the wrong house. It also seems likely that she would be dishonorable enough to tell the neighbors what she wanted, which wasn’t that bad but still none of their business.

I have a very good email address. It is so good that every person with a similar name to mine seems to think it’s theirs. I get mortgage quotes, religious crap, family pictures, and event invites regularly. I recently was told that I have a Twitter account. This is becoming a large problem.

I replied to the sign-up email and told them the situation. I got no reply and apparently I’m still signed up because now I’ve been told I have a follower. If you go to Twitter’s site looking for support, it only seems to be available to members. Since I’m not a member, I have no way of logging in so I can’t post a question or problem.

This should be illegal. I should have a right to expect that companies won’t do this. I don’t know what to do to clear this up. If it is possible to talk to someone at Twitter, they’ve made it very obscure. It seems that I may be stuck getting some n00b’s emails forever because Twitter is poorly managed and isn’t able to take proper responsibility.

Some of you know about my recent day in traffic court. If not here is a brief summary. I was driving along one night, not far from home, when I saw a police officer parked with all lights out in a manner that completely blocked a driveway and partly blocked a sidewalk. Of course it’s no surprise that the officer’s ego was too big to take my honk as I drove by.

I knew I would be found guilty, but I went ahead and wasted way more than $60 of the system’s time. I saw it as a cheap way to get some more courtroom experience while exercising my rights. I went through the process and discovered some pretty shady things along the way.

First of all, I wanted a deposition from the officer, but it turns out that the law here doesn’t allow for one of those in misdemeanors. Fortunately the prosecutor’s office has an open door policy involving these things so they were actually pretty helpful. That said, the prosecutor and the police officers I spoke to didn’t seem to understand the purpose of a deposition. They acted like there was no good reason to have that information before trial. It’s common sense that you want to know all of the officer’s answers before you ask the questions in court. That’s why depositions are allowed for felonies.

Then some major shadiness occurred when I attempted to get dash-cam video footage from the records division. First, I called and was told that I needed a subpoena to get that and I was specifically told that public records laws do not apply. I did some looking on the internet and found that the police department must give up video footage in most cases and that to knowingly deny access to public records is a misdemeanor. It’s really too bad that I didn’t get that person’s name, though it was probably unintentional due to lack of training. Then I walked in to the records department in person. I told the employee there, Cheryl Spencer, that I’d like to get some footage. She asked me what I needed and I told her that I could give her an officer, date, and time period. She said that wasn’t good enough and that I needed to identify the incident. I was very adamant that I didn’t like being required to tell her my name and the case this was in regards to. It happens to also be illegal. Iowa public records law requires only that I give enough information for a subject matter expert to retrieve the requested document. Finally, I was told that if I wanted it, it was going to cost $23. The price seemed a little high to me considering that Iowa public records law does not allow for a profit to be made on the duplication of public records. For all of these reasons, I have been in contact with the Iowa Attorney General’s office so with any luck the Ames Police Department will be forced to start obeying state laws.

Finally, let me tell you about some of the ridiculous things that Officer Adrienne Johnson (she goes by Ady) said in court. Part of the reason I fought this was to bring light to some ridiculousness. The officer is the only witness against a typical traffic-court defendant. For that reason, officers have to come in there acting like they know their stuff and remember details of the encounter even though in reality they have pulled enough people over in the past two months that there is no way they can be a good witness. Let’s just say in a murder trial, such low-quality witnesses would be impeached quickly.

1) She claimed that she was an expert on license plates and that’s how she noticed an Arizona plate on a car earlier in the evening. When I asked her to describe an Arizona license plate, she said simply that it is yellow. That’s not very accurate. The background behind the numbers on an AZ license plate is white. When I asked her what color the letters are, she didn’t know. When I asked her how it differed from an Ohio license plate, she didn’t know. When I asked her if she could tell the difference between an Arizona license plate and an Ohio license plate, she said no. She ended up acknowledging that the car that drove by could have had either an AZ or OH license plate. This is called perjury.

2) She went into great detail describing how dark it was where she was sitting then, 10 minutes later, explained how it wasn’t really that dark. This is also called perjury.

3) When asked what road I was stopped on, she named the wrong road. It wasn’t just me tripping her up on names either. She legitimately thought she pulled me over on the major road that was north of the small side street that I was actually stopped on. This is pretty bad memory considering she no doubt studied her notes beforehand.

4) When asked if anything was different about me on the day of the trial from when she stopped me, she didn’t notice my full growth of facial hair in contrast to being clean shaven when stopped. This is pretty bad memory. At about this point she acknowledged that it had been two months so she didn’t remember many details.

I took the stand since I knew I would be found guilty either way. But really, I shouldn’t have. Seeing how un-credible Officer Johnson was on the stand, a fair court might have thrown the charges out.

In order to get my car registration renewed in Arizona without getting the emissions test, I had to have a police officer here sign a paper saying that the car is here in Kansas. I went down to the Wichita police station to get it signed. When I first gave the paper to the lady at the desk, her exact word were “I’m going to have to go get a real officer.” I was about to burst out laughing but thought it was better to remain quiet. Anyways, she ended up coming out of the back and telling me that the city police can’t do that. She said some B.S. about the Kansas Highway Patrol taking care of inspections and all of that. I told her that the Arizona law says that I can have any police officer sign it. Apparently Arizona places faith in police officers as being responsible and honorable enough to take care of it. But the Wichita police apparently don’t think of themselves as real police officers able to sign such a paper. When I was starting to get angry she told me she had worked there for 22 years.

When I went to the highway patrol station the next day, a very friendly and professional officer took care of it for me in about 1 minute. I asked him about the Wichita police and he said it sounds like they just didn’t want to do it and pointed out to me that it says right on the paper that any officer could sign it.

The whole thing was a waste of my time and gas and it was all because of the police shirking their responsibilities.

So Judge Nevius rejected my appeal in the case I previously wrote about. I’m sure that a lot of it has to do with my lack of legal ability. I have no doubt that a lawyer could have made it happen with how obviously ridiculous this case was. The system needs to shape up right from the top. I maintain that I shouldn’t need a lawyer to argue against an officer who is ignorant of the law in question. It’s all about the money.

Also last week I had a debate with a guy here who used to work with the police. He was so obviously indoctrinated. His grounds for why cops should just pull over people without grounds is that they often catch them for other criminal things. Sorry, but that just isn’t in the spirit of the constitution. The ends aren’t supposed to justify the means. Besides, if that is true, why do they always write tickets? Also I realized that I tend to come off as anti-cop. That is not at all what I mean. I think we need cops and laws. I just wish that the police would focus on the laws that actually affect people. I don’t think that police officers are evil people. I just think that they are part of a severely broken system that no longer serves the needs of the people. I believe that they really think they are doing good because they have been so brainwashed that they actually believe that speed laws are set for safety. In Ohio at least, that is simply not true.

Finally, it doesn’t matter if I’m right. What matters is that there is a whole group of people who agrees with me. These people are not allies of the system. We don’t trust it. If the police plan to fight real crimes, they will need to have the support of the public.

I think I was too easy on officer Melchi in the last post. I realized that a large part of why I lost was because officer Melchi decided to write 800 block on the ticket even though he verbally told me 900 block at the scene.

I’ve been trying to look at the bright sides of this, mainly that there is no way they prosecuted this case for the $138 I paid. The only way we will curb needless tickets is by impacting the economics behind them. On the other hand, it is unfortunate that I had to do this and waste all of that government money and time. I would rather have seen officer Melchi out on the town preventing a murder or something than having him be paid to sit in court. But he probably would have been ripping poor college students off instead. I make about $1600 a month (pre-tax). I don’t have a lot of money to throw away on this sort of thing, but the system doesn’t understand that. There is no way I could have been more innocent than I was today, so what can a person do when they are wrongfully accused and the system places such little value on personal testimony?

The other good news is that my last post is already the #1 search result for “officer Melchi” or “Brian Melchi.”

I ended up fighting the speeding ticket that I wrote about in a previous post. It turned out that the officer was wrong about the speed limit on the road. There was no speed zone in either direction, which meant that I was doing 55 in a 55 zone. I went to court today and ended up being found guilty anyway. The good news is that the magistrate liked my defense and he suspended the fine so all I had to pay was court costs and I got 2 points on my license. That was still a high price, but I’m confident that the system lost money wasting their time on me. Also I’m uncertain if my Arizona license will ever see those points.

I will include some names because I like my site to be in the Google results when people search for them. I was in front of magistrate Albert Stewart. The only witness for the prosecution was officer Brian Melchi and my witnesses were myself and Bruce Smith, the County Engineer.

I realized beforehand that I remember officer Melchi from my days at Clark State. He was one of the power-trip officers who would camp out by the stop sign waiting for people like me to intentionally run it. But that’s another story.

Officer Melchi testified completely accurately as to his beliefs about the speed zones and I can’t fault him because he never asserted that I was still back in the stretch before the speed limit changed to 55.

The assistant county prosecutor spent his time trying to get me to acknowledge that I had accelerated to 55 before leaving the speed zone. For whatever reason, he was successful at doing just that even though I never once said I was traveling faster than 35 in the 35 zone. He kept asking me to clarify what speed I was going at different points, but I never misspoke as he was hoping for. I thought I made it clear that I accelerated to 55MPH after leaving the speed zone. For some reason, those assertions were enough for magistrate Stewart to agree with him. It became very apparent that it was never about the truth to the prosecutor. He knew he would lose if they stuck with the story about the speed zones being different on each side of the road, since I thoroughly debunked that notion. The problem was that 2 houses in the 800 block rested in the 35 zone. Since my ticket says 800 block I figured I should try to convince the magistrate that I was on the right side of it before accelerating. I should have concentrated way less on that I guess.

The magistrate found me guilty because (he said) he weighted the officer’s testimony more than mine, even though the officer never asserted that I was in the 35 zone. Even at the scene, the officer indicated that he clocked me in an area that was 55 on the other side but 35 on mine. The good news was that the magistrate liked my testimony and professionalism when representing myself so he suspended the fine.

On the way out of the courthouse, I asked officer Melchi if it was ever really about the truth. He indicated that he has no problem with the prosecution’s tactic. That’s funny, since at the scene he said that I would not have been speeding if I had been in the other lane.

The whole experience wasn’t too bad. The magistrate was helpful to me. He even overruled one objection against me. The county engineer was great and I felt sorry that I had to waste his time with this. The prosecutor did his job, but he is scum as far as I’m concerned. He got me convicted not because of the actual crime but because of a notion that hadn’t been confirmed by any witnesses. At least officer Melchi didn’t actually lie on the stand, but it’s too bad that he isn’t more aware of the speed limits because none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for his mistake. Also I have a hunch that he will gladly pull people over for the same thing again. I have decided that I am always going to pursue tickets as much as I can from now on. If I’m really guilty, I might be less likely to go to an actual trial. People need to fight these things even if they might lose, just to make the system realize that we won’t just pay up. They just need to realize that the system is designed to raise money and there is no allowance for reasonable doubt.

As some of you may know, I am in Florence, Italy for CHI 2008. If anybody is unsure, that is the premier Human Computer Interaction conference. I am a member of a team that designed a successful submission to the CHI Student Design Competition. Only 12 out of 40 teams were accepted to the conference. Last night we had a poster session where those 12 teams were judged to decide who would advance to the final four. Our team was selected, so now we get to give a 10-minute presentation tomorrow morning to compete for our rank within the top four spots.

The conference has been great so far and I have met many people from all over the world. I have also been working as a student volunteer, which has really facilitated networking. Iowa State’s name isn’t really out there very much in the HCI community and it has been great representing our program. Carnegie Melon has about 40 students in attendance and we only have 2. Hopefully when I get back I can help drive increased attendance at next year’s CHI in Boston. I would like to get a submission accepted obviously but, since it will be so much closer and cheaper, I would like to go anyway.

The picture above features me with Thad Starner. For the many of you who may not know, he has been wearing a computer since 1993. That thing that I am holding is the display. After this picture was taken, I joined him and a couple hundred of his friends for the Georgia Tech GVU reception. I was shocked at how many people were present and how awesome it was. I met many new people and got to know some a little better. Tonight should be even better, since there are about 5 parties to choose from, including the infamous Google party. Unfortunately I can’t be out too late, since we have our student design competition final presentation at 9AM.

I just got another ticket. It was near Springfield and was a similar scenario to how a got a ticket when I was 17. I was driving on a road with a speed limit of 35 MPH while the other side was 55.

It was a Clark County Sheriff who pulled me over and he was one of the more friendly and professional cops I have encountered. But was writing me a ticket really accomplishing anything other than revenue-raising? Punishing people for crimes that they accidentally commit does nothing to deter future crimes. That cop could have instead spent his time preventing a murder or even pulling over somebody who was maliciously disobeying the law. Also I don’t want to imply that this happened, but it certainly fails to reject the hypothesis that Ohio cops target out-of-state plates (probably less chance of the cop needing to show up on the court date).

Further, it has always bothered me that the speed limit is 20 miles-per-hour different on each side of the road. It seems like this would rarely be necessary for safety and further supports revenue-raising theories. Particularly in the case of both roads that I am referring to, where the limit on the downhill lane of the road is lower than that on the uphill lane.

When I drive in Iowa, I never feel threatened by the police. I just drive at a comfortable and safe speed, mostly within the limits but no guarantees, and they never bother me. Here in Ohio, the only people who don’t get tickets are old people who just drive slow naturally. People who drive the sheer number of miles that I do every year (20,000-30,000), and aren’t old and slow, just don’t have a chance. Interestingly, these old and slow drivers are causing accidents too, but the cops don’t even notice them.

Since eBay has been touting it’s changes to the buyer and seller ratings system, I thinks it’s time to chime in.

Since the detailed seller ratings were first introduced, I have had a particular problem with one of them: shipping fees. Why should a buyer be able to rate a seller’s shipping fees? There is nothing secretive or misleading about shipping. If you agree to buy an item, you know the cost that you have agreed upon up-front. As a seller, I reserve the right to charge for packaging materials as well as my gas for the 20 minute drive to the shipping store. A buyer can take it or leave it, but why should he be able to affect my ratings because of that?

Buyers notoriously tend to have no concept of what shipping actually costs. Before I sell an item on eBay, I go to the UPS store and have them tell me the total cost to package and ship the item to 90210 (or an obviously far away zip code from whatever state I happen to be in). I mark it down a few dollars, and that’s my price. I lose money on some and gain money on others, but it’s a flat rate and there are no surprises.

Last year, a customer of mine was upset by my shipping price of $25 on an item. After getting lucky and winning the item for $0.99, he emailed me and proclaimed that the shipping costs to Colorado were $7 and asked that I give him a discount. For one thing, what incentive do I have to give him a discount after he already bid and won? For another thing, nothing ships from Ohio to Colorado for $7. Add packaging and even the smallest items must cost about $12 to ship there. This was a rotisserie unit for a cooktop! It was big! I had already heavily discounted the price that shipping to 90210 would have cost ($35). I emailed him back explaining my policy of flat-rate shipping and how I win some and lose some. I believe it ended up costing $19. I’m sure he rated my shipping fees poorly, but is that any indicator of my selling fairness?