Monday, April 28, 2008

Don't Ticket the Bigwigs

I was reminded today of an exciting time in Denver, when I lived downtown at Brooks Towers, which was an apartment building right smack downtown. It was quite cool, because my office was catty-corner across the street in the Central Bank building.

Walking home from Larimer Square one night, there were so many Mercedes Benzes, Lincolns, limousines and Cadillacs parked on the sidewalk in front of a restaurant popular with the bigwigs in Denver that it was necessary to walk in the street to pass by. When I got home, I called the Denver PD and requested tickets on the illegally parked cars.

My balcony overlooked the street, and I watched the area patrol car drive by and saw the officers wave at the valet. Ah-ha! That's what I thought.

So the next night I called again. And the next night - a Friday - I called again. This time I had the scanner on and heard one of the officers in the patrol car say, "Is that same guy calling? We can't write tickets there. The captain told us not to write tickets there."

A couple of weeks later, the beat cops were in the building to investigate a burglary and they stopped by to say hello. I invited them in, and one asked if he could step out on the balcony. "See? I told you he could see from here," he said to his partner. The other cop asked if he could look around, and he spotted my scanner. "See? I told you he had a scanner." They also told me that they'd caught a lot of heat about that radio transmission!

They told me that they couldn't write tickets unless I called, so I started calling every night. And every night they wrote tickets.

I must have gotten busy during one week and didn't call. When I was walking on Larimer Square one night, I heard a horn and turned around. The beat car was pulling to the curb, and the driver - smiling - asked where I'd been for a week. "Start calling us again. We need to write some tickets over there."

When I arrived home one afternoon, the doorman asked if I were in some kind of trouble, because two detectives had stopped by to question him about me. The next day I called the district captain and really blistered him about sending the detectives to check out a law-abiding citizen who was only asking the police to do their job. I was ready to sic one of the TV stations on him, but then I moved.

Sometimes people ask me if I don't like cops. I do like cops. I especially like the ones who obey the laws themselves and really live the motto "To protect and to serve."

© 2008 GUS PHILPOTT

4 comments:

Unknown said...

You dont respect any authority figures, and they dont respect you. You hate cops, firefighters, soldiers, and this list can go on. If you didnt hate them you wouldnt complain about emergency vehicles being in the fire lane at jewel and the rec center. So shut your yap and stop this slander.

Gus said...

Since you mentioned it, pirate, the parking of fire trucks and paramedic vehicles in the Fire Lane at the Recreation Center, when the firefighters and paramedics are working out and not there on a fire or rescue call, is illegal.

Just because the Fire Chief tells or allows the drivers to do it doesn't make it legal. It would be interesting to learn why the beat officers do not ticket them. If you read the law, it's illegal. The City refused to get a legal opinion from the City Attorney. If they had, the City Attorney would have told them it is illegal. Guess they follow the Don't Ask, Don't Tell rule. The City Attorney is not going to give the City Council an opinion until they ask for it.

The Fire Lane at the Jewel-Osco is a different issue. The signs are meaningless and have no effect in law, because the City won't complete a Vehicular Control Agreement with the property owners. The Fire Lane signs, Loading Zone and Stop Signs mean nothing legally. It's clearly Walk at Your Own Risk there.

Thanks for raising this issue again. I was going to let it lie, but you brought it up, and so I extend the courtesy of this response to you.

Unknown said...

You just don't get it do you? Everybody hates you in this town. The cops in Denver most likely hated you. You are such an asshole about everything. Any request or complaint is usually discarded once they find out it is from you. Have you ever gotten anymore info on the Halligus Rd accident that is really none of your concern anyways? Why do you think that is. Maybe if you weren't running around town acting like a dickweed, you may be respected. What goes around comes around.

Unknown said...

bringing back your post agreeing with yourself, you are right, people raised from bad parents dont have respect for people or life. so you just agreed with yourself for being a jackass.