My next step was to call and speak to a customer service representative. She said that she could see where it had been on my report but that it had been removed. She couldn’t tell me anything about it except that it had been removed and I was clearly wrong about having never done business with CitiBank. This item has allegedly been on my credit report for 13 years and now all of a sudden it disappears, and she wants me to just act like it didn’t happen. She just kept saying that I had been an authorized user on an account with CitiBank but that it was recently removed from my report. I told her very specifically that I wanted to dispute that statement, as I had never done business with CitiBank.

The big-picture problem here is one of accountability and the way CSRs always push accountability onto their computer system. I believe that I have a valid reason to expect a better explanation of mysterious items on my credit report but all the lady could do was regurgitate what was on her computer screen. She even did this to the extent of insulting my intelligence by believing the computer screen over me. It is infuriating when people are trained to hide behind their computers instead of actually serving the customer. Unfortunately, this has become the norm in all industries.

Many supporters of photo-enforcement seem to think that one shouldn’t be worried about this topic if we obey the law. Well, really that’s exactly what my problem with it is- The system should obey the law too. There are several reasons why the use of photo-enforcement is unlawful as well as unethical:

1) The technology just isn’t that good. I have worked on image-recognition systems of the type that would be used to automatically read license plate numbers. They aren’t perfect, and things get worse under varying weather conditions and lighting that occur in the real-world.

2) The agencies and companies behind photocop systems always promise to have humans look at each and every ticket to ensure that the problems in point one above are caught. In reality, these humans simply serve as a rubber stamp. On my ticket, there was a picture of a different guy driving a vehicle of a different make and color than the vehicle I was driving. Three Redflex employees and one police officer(?) looked at my ticket to check for these errors. A second person from the police department had his signature affixed to the ticket. This is fraud and possibly libel since the incident is still on my record.

3) A private company installs, calibrates, and operates these cameras. The same company sends out the tickets. The company contractually receives approximately 50% of profits.

4) I am supposed to have the right to confront my accuser yet that is really a computer in this case. When you show up to court for one of these tickets, not one human being believes that you are guilty. It’s just a picture. There is no testimony regarding calibration or circumstances. If the picture is of somebody else, then they wasted your time in hopes that you would pay instead of dealing with the hassle.

Red light cameras (RLCs) in particular have been repeatedly shown to increase accident rates. When state laws make it harder for communities to profit from these deals, the cameras are always taken down quickly. This just shows that it really is all about the money. We need to vote against these things as they get put on the ballot in various cities and we need to vote against any politician who has supported them.

Apparently Officer Johnson really likes to showcase her immense power by parking illegally whenever possible. This time she was blocking an entire row of parking spots in front of Cafe Milo. She had somebody pulled over into a parking spot so she thought it would be a good idea to park her car a good 40 feet behind him in the center of the road in a spot that most impeded other drivers. When I was inside Milo, the barista told me that it was better than where she had been parked before I got there, as apparently she was blocking access to an entire half of the parking lot before moving.

I was already upset by it before I knew who it was, but upon seeing it was her I’m not that surprised.

Overall, Discount Tire didn’t end up getting the money and they lost two customers. I actually was the one who recommended them to Tiffany because I had never experienced the sort of sales tactics there that I had seen at other places, but now I have no plans to go back without a very compelling reason. This is what capitalism in America has turned into. Having a storefront is no longer about selling a better product or service than the other guy. It’s about tricking people into paying more than they should. For one thing, these warrantees are not worth it unless you plan to drive through construction zones everyday. For another, my tire is a spare mounted to the side of my trailer. It will need replaced 7 years from now because of cracking, not road hazards. When I go to a store (particularly automotive places), I tend to know exactly what I’m looking for. I need the salespeople to give me (just) that thing at a good price with good service. Otherwise I don’t come back.

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Senator Quirmbach sent out another email the other day, illustrating that he is either clueless or is just pandering to people’s fears. I didn’t send him these responses but I have included some rebuttals below:

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Taking your eyes off the road and your hands off the wheel are dangerous habits. By restricting texting while driving, we can save lives and make Iowa roads safer for everyone.

Sure it’s not good to take the hands and eyes away from the road, but the cognitive resources are really what causes accidents. Don’t dumb this down for me, senator. Also if studies have shown that cell-phone bans don’t decrease accidents then how do you figure on making the roads “safer for everyone?”

At any given moment, one percent of drivers on the road are texting. Those drivers can be as much as 23 times more likely to crash, putting everyone on the road at risk.

I rebutted this above. This number is probably high because it applies to long haul truckers. Also this sounds more like propaganda than telling me about an issue, senator.

Senate File 2321 would make it illegal to write or send a text-based message unless the vehicle is stopped and off the roadway. The use of GPS devices will still be permitted, and if you get an urgent message, you may still read it.

So it sounds like you’re going to outlaw just enough to make people feel safe but not really tackle the cognitive issues. What text message could possibly be so urgent? What if my GPS device is a phone? If I enter an address into my phone, that sounds like text to me. What if I use one of the phones that allow hands free text messaging? What if the person on the other end has a phone that reads text messages to them? What would make that different than just using the phone for voice? I realize that the bill has more detail that answers some of these questions, but basically your law was obsolete before it was written because it will do nothing to make the roads safer. Remember, using the thumbs has not been shown to cause accidents – diverting cognitive resources has.

For one year after the law goes into effect, officers will issue warnings to violators while the Department of Transportation and the Department of Public Safety step up efforts to educate the public about the dangers of texting while driving.

For what reason? This education really sounds like propaganda to convince people that you aren’t all screwing around down there in Des Moines. If you write a good law, it should be enforceable on day 1.
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I don’t text message while driving, but I would love to be the lucky defendant that gets to fight one of these tickets in court. I agree that this is bad stuff and that people should keep their eyes, hands, and minds on the road. If we have decided that this is a large enough problem to legislate on, let’s be comprehensive. We shouldn’t single out specific technologies. Technology is a moving target and we will never make the roads safer with the current approach. This is likely a larger problem with our society. I don’t know how to fix it, but people need to start thinking of driving as a task that is important on its own, warranting proper attention.

The right way to go now is probably to make sure that distracted driving laws are comprehensive enough. I don’t want to regulate everything like California tried to do (radio, smoking, etc…). I’d like to see a law that makes it performance-based so that if a person swerves because they were adjusting the radio they would get the same penalty as a person who did so because they were sharpening their skates. This is really the only way to improve safety with a fair, technology-independent approach.

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 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.

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.

The law here doesn’t allow for a deposition in such offenses but the prosecutor’s office has an open door policy 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.

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.

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.