Topic: Profiling?

[tortelvis]

I find most cops are human and don't give me too much grief regardless of what I am riding. The exception was the Plod in Britain who pulled me up late one night after a club meeting at the pub. "Reason we stopped you is your tail light is out." I banged it and it came back on. "Loose wire mate, fix it tomorrow." Bear in mind it is late at night, I am on a matt black XS1100 rat chop wearing colours. What he said next pissed me off! "Well sir, been to the pub have we? We are going to get you to blow into this device and then WE ARE GOING TO GO OVER YOUR BIKE WITH A FINE TOOTH COMB". I can handle the breath test but he wanted to write me up for SOMETHING! Aside from the dodgy tail light the bike was in perfect order so he had to let me go. Mind you he followed me right up to my door, the bastid.

[Terry in Australia]

Yeah, there are cops  and then there are cops 

Back in the 1980's, I did the annual pilgrimage to Bathurst for the Easter Motorcycle TT. It was a fantastic event, but there was a heavy police presence, and a large group of bikers so close to a large group of cops is not a healthy mix, so there were some pretty violent riots up on Mt Panorama in 1981, 83 and 85.

My mate Pete (who'd been arrested with his brother Dave in 1981, but their cases were subsequently thrown out) and I rode to Bathurst (my first trip) in 1983. On the Friday night we went to a pub for dinner. Knowing that the cops would be everywhere, we washed down our food with really low alcohol beer. (Swan Light, .9% alcohol, from memory)

Anyway, we were there for a few hours, and we were buying this "beer" by the jug and going thru it pretty quickly. When we left, we saw a cop car across the street but didn't pay them much attention. We started our bikes, (both CB750's that year) and rode about 100 yards before they pulled us over and breathalyzed us. We both "blew in the bag", and the cops were dumbfounded that we were both well below the legal limit!

That seemed strange to Pete and I, there were other bikers leaving at the same time as us (the pub was closing) but these cops seemed to have targetted us in particular, and we later came to the conclusion that the cops had an undercover "Nark" (Aussie slang for "Informer") in the pub that saw us drinking all this "Beer" and assumed that we'd both be well over the legal blood alcohol limit. I thought the whole thing was a little under-handed that they let us get on our bikes, start them and ride off before they stopped us. If they were worried about our well being, they would have had plenty of opportunity to stop us before we even got our keys out, if they wanted to. 

On the other hand, I've been "let off" more than I've been booked over the years, even when I got caught doing "Speeds in excess of 180 KPH (112 MPH) in a 60 KPH (35 MPH) zone on a learners permit" on my first CB750 when I was 18. Once the cop found out that I was a soldier (he was a Vietnam veteran, which obviously helped) he reduced it to 130 KPH, which only resulted in an 80 dollar fine. (which was still equivalent to a weeks pay then, but by reducing it as he did, I didn't have to go to court and get banned from riding) He didn't have to, he could have thrown the book at me, but he was a decent bloke. Cheers, Terry.