Minor Thoughts from me to you

In America, are we ruled by men or by laws? Theoretically, we're ruled by laws -- everyone is under the law and no one escapes justice. In practice, that's not true. And the very people who are charged with enforcing the law are often the first to ignore the law.

Take the traffic laws for instance:

Some patrol officers let drivers with protected plates off with a warning because the plates signal that the drivers are "one of their own" or related to someone who is. The Register used public records laws to obtain OCTA computer logs for the 91 Express Lanes and found 14,535 unpaid trips by motorists with confidential plates in the past five years. A Register analysis showed that was 3,722 separate vehicles, some running the toll road hundreds of times.

Among the top violators on OCTA's list were Dwight and Michell Storay (he's a parole agent with the Department of Corrections), with 622 violations and Lenai and Arnold Carraway (she's an Orange County social worker), with 239 violations.

Some police officers confess that when they pull over someone with a confidential license plate they're more likely to let them off with a warning. In most cases, one said, if an officer realizes a motorist has a confidential plate, the car won't be pulled over at all.

"It's an unwritten rule that we would extend professional courtesy," said Ron Smith, a retired Los Angeles Police Department officer who worked patrol for 23 years. "Nine out of 10 times I would."

Many police departments that run red light camera programs systematically dismiss citations issued to confidential plates.

"It's a courtesy, law enforcement to law enforcement," San Francisco Police Sgt. Tom Lee said. "We let it go."

It's not a "courtesy". It's breaking the law. These police officers should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice. I'm as angry about this practice as I was the last time I wrote about it. It is wrong -- absolutely wrong -- for justice to be perverted this way. Being related to a police officer -- being a police officer -- does not make you special. It does not exempt you from following the rules. The police should know better.

Let me be blunt: any officer that would do this does not deserve to wear the badge.