The Calm Before the Storm

Have you ever had a bad experience that has led to a bad taste in your mouth? Maybe it was a food that you had as a child that literally got you sick, and has forever ruined your appetite to eat that food again. Or maybe it was a bad relationship that has gotten you jaded and looking at everyone with a skeptical eye. Have you ever had a bad experience with someone of another race, and now that has shaped the way you look at everyone of that race? You may not openly voice those opinions, biases, or judgments, but we’ve all done it.

I’m guilty of this myself. Probably of all three that I mentioned. And this morning, I found myself infuriated, again, with cops.

I was taking out the trash this morning in my complex when I saw the unmarked State Trooper camped out on the street outside my development. I was thinking to myself, “What a jerk” (or maybe something worse) as I imagined him sitting there just looking for reasons to pull people over.

By the time I made it back to my car, he was gone. I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road where he was idling. As I was nearing the stop sign, there he was, idling again…waiting for his next prey.

I took my time getting there. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by coming up on him too fast. Red sports cars have a way of giving the appearance of exaggerated motions.

I could see his face in the side view mirror, and I instantly remembered who this guy was. He had pulled me over on the way to work about ten months ago. I was riding my motorcycle, minding my own business. I was sitting in traffic at a light, idling behind a school bus when I noticed out of my periphery that a car was creeping up beside me. When I turned my head to the right, he rolled down his window and signaled for me to pull over. What in the world could I have possibly done, in traffic, having only been on the road for less than a mile? Where did this creeper come from?

Forty-five minutes later, he gave me a citation for having my license plate displayed vertically. According to this guy (and this guy only – I later verified with several other cops and two other bike shops the validity of his statement – they denied confirmation of his claim), a license plate must be displayed horizontally. $75 later, I still have not purchased a $200 license bracket plus the labor it would take to remedy the situation. Instead, I’ve barely ridden my motorcycle in the past year out of fear that this ____ cop is going to stumble across me again and write me another ticket – or worse, find some other reason to cart me off to jail.

Am I crazy? Is it just my imagination? Am I just that rebellious that I’m breaking laws left and right, looking for trouble?

Well, this morning, when I saw him sitting at the stop sign, getting ready to pull onto the main drag to work, I thought to myself…I better keep a safe distance so that he can’t run my plates. My cop friends tell me that they run plates all day long. If you see a cop on the highway, cruising with a pack of cars, guess what they’re doing – they’re running all the plates of the cars around them. If they see anything off (an expired tag, a delinquent parking ticket, a cracked windshield, a tail light that is out, a dark tint…), they WILL pull you over just to see what else they can find. Those little things are a gateway to finding bigger things. Their philosophy is “where there is smoke, there’s fire…”…so you don’t want to have any smoke coming from your car (pun intended).

I know many of you are thinking, “but I have a cracked windshield”, or “I have 10 unpaid parking tickets”, or “my tail light has been out for 2 years and I’ve never been pulled over”. Well, here’s the catch…there are caveats to this procedure. If you’re driving a four cylinder grannymobile, and you’re a white female, or if you’re a white male driving a Cadillac CTS, and your record is clean, they’re not going to bother you. Check out this article on Frederick County if you don’t believe it’s a problem (Experts say racial disparity among stops warrant investigation). It’s just not worth their time because it’s not likely that they are going to find anything else. But if you’re an asian male in a predominantly caucasian county, in a red sports car with tinted windows and a criminal  record, they WILL pull you over. Wow…when I look at it like that, maybe I’d pull myself over too.

I was already pulled over for this violation a year ago. Another cop pulled me over, claiming that my window tint was over the legal limit. It wasn’t. I specifically ordered the legal limit when I bought the tint. Why would I want to draw unnecessary attention to myself, right? Apparently it didn’t matter. If they “suspect” that it’s illegal, the burden falls on me to prove otherwise. What no one tells you is how you can go about proving your innocence. Not even the cops. I went through the process of proving the legality of my tint, had the necessary citations signed off on, paid my fine, and thought this was behind me. Then one day, I received a notice in the mail that my registration was being suspended. Messy messy messy. And have I mentioned the frustration?

That was supposed to have been sorted out this past March. So when the Trooper this morning started gabbing about my illegal tint, I pulled out copies of the documents I had proving my innocence.

This doesn’t tell me anything. What this says is that you were late in sorting this problem out in the first place. And who’s to say you haven’t gotten a darker tint since then?

Are you kidding me? I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I play by their rules, and they still screw with you. He and I knew that this was not about a window tint…but neither one of us was going to mention the big, fat elephant standing between us. Every time that has come up, they (and I) end up getting angry with each other. They feel the need to put a “criminal” in his place, and I feel a need to remind them that I’ve paid my dues and debt to society and shouldn’t be condemned for something that happened six years ago. It gets us nowhere, so I just bit my lip.

Just do what you got to do

I didn’t want to get in a battle with him, so I just told him to write me up and do what he had to do. He was in his car on his cell phone for a good twenty minutes – verifying all the statements and claims I had made to see if he had caught me in a lie.

After a short prayer, I was reminded of a promise from God – a promise that I need to hold on to whenever I’m feeling condemned. A promise for days like today:

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. – Isaiah 43:18-19

Minutes later, the Trooper got out of his vehicle and made his way back to mine. This time, I was NOT issued a ticket. I was just issued a repair order. He told me that he was going to personally follow up with me to see that I have this done. “Do you have any questions?”, he asked.

“Yes. When you say you are going to ‘personally’ follow up with me, what do you mean by that? Do you plan on knocking on my door so that you can inspect my tint?”

“No. I’ll just follow up with you.”

“Right. But we live in the same neighborhood, so what are you planning to do?” He didn’t answer. So I just looked away and waited for him to leave.

“Have a nice day”, he said.

When I got back to the office, there was an email waiting for me from my prayer partner, reminding me of God’s promise for my future, reminding me to disregard Satan’s condemnation for something that I’ve been forgiven of already.

I have to admit it’s hard for me to look at every cop individually and refrain from lumping them all into one pool of jerks and power hungry idiots. It helps that I have friends who are cops, and friends who want to become cops (I know their hearts and their commitment to God first)…but still, when things like this happen, I revert to my disgust of their pettiness. In my fifteen years of driving, I’ve been pulled over three times up until 2003. Since I’ve gotten out of prison in 2006, I’ve been pulled over at least a dozen times for innocuous things. Never for speeding. Never for a flagrant violation.

Yes, I have a chip on my shoulder, and I’m working to smooth it out. It’s not ok for me to think this way about cops.

Are there things that you’ve done in the past that have haunted you years later? Do they have a way of coming back to condemn you time and time again? How does that shape the way you perceive the world around you? How do you treat others as a result of what has happened to you? Remember that if you are repentant, God has forgiven you, and that condemnation is not from God – that’s from the Adversary.