Traffic Court in a Shopping Mall
January 21, 2009
I'm not sure what I was expecting from traffic court. I wasn't surprised at how run-down everything was — after all, it was right next door to the DMV — but there was something odd about going to court at Atlantic Center — a Brooklyn shopping mall with a Target, a Best Buy, and a Vitoria’s Secret — and riding the escalator, waiting in line alongside store windows selling clothes and electronics. The only storefront that was open so early — 8:30 AM — was a law office, with bright fluorescent lighting illuminating messy piles of paperwork.
I arrived a few minutes early and stood in line waiting for the Traffic Violations Bureau to open. A couple of guys in front of me were complaining that if they had realized their hearings were scheduled for Inauguration Day, they would've rescheduled and hopped a bus to D.C They were figuring their chances of getting their hearings over with in time to make it to Washington by noon. (Slim to none) An old busybody behind them had been listening, "It's not worth it,” she said. “You'd never get anywhere near enough to see anything. They said on the news that there were already 3 million people there."
"I'd just like to be there," one of the guys said — his head was shaved and tattooed, and a small Bluetooth headset was flashing a steady blue light in his ear, which made him look like an escapee from a futuristic prison. "I don't care if I stand way in the back," he said, somewhat aggressively. "Don't need to see anything, just want to be there."
The woman ignored him and turned toward a tall, clean cut and carefully dressed college professor — at least that's what he looked like to me, with his earth-tone striped scarf draped loosely across his shoulders— and they began discussing political science, free markets and socialism, quoting current pundits and authors to back up predictions about the end of the world as we know it. "So and so says—" "I happen to disagree with that, but—" And so on.
The doors finally opened, and a tiny guard, looking like a fifty-year-old Cub Scout, ushered everyone inside. "Find your name on the bulletin board," he said. "It'll tell you what room to go to."
The information on the xeroxed list was printed in such small type that you had to squint and strain to read any of it. As a result, everyone was crowded on top of each other, eager to find their names and get the ball rolling.
I was meeting a lawyer there, but I'd never seen him before and didn't know what he looked like — I only assumed he'd be one of the few guys in a suit. I decided to find my room — Room 4 — and see if he was there.
Room 4 was down the hall and around a few corners. There were several policemen loitering outside each doorway — waiting to testify about the tickets they wrote — and I consciously avoided looking at any of them. I couldn't remember what my officer looked like and didn't want to take any chances of him remembering me, either.
"Can I help you?" asked the woman behind the desk in room 4 — her glasses hanging from a chain, just as you’d expect from a court clerk.
"I have a hearing," I said.
She motioned for me to hand over my paperwork and asked for my driver's license.
"I'm meeting a lawyer," I said as she looked it over.
"Okay. I'll just check you in, and then you can go find him. He'll be in the Attorney's Room, it's back the way you came."
She gave me back my papers, but held on to my license, and I went to find my lawyer, whom I'd not only never met, but never spoken to before. All I had was a name — given to me a day earlier by the law office I'd hired to represent me.
He turned out to be a slightly disheveled seventy-something guy in a three-piece suit that may have been custom-tailored once upon a time — decades ago, when he was a dashing young go-getter. I told him I'd checked in already.
"Why did you do that?" he said.
I shrugged.
"Why did you do that?" he said again, slowly, deliberately, as if I were a kindergarten kid who had just thrown a spitball. "You knew you were meeting someone here, why would you go and check yourself in?"
"I wasn't sure where I was meeting you. I've never done this before."
"It doesn't matter! Why would you do that?"
"I don't know."
"Do you know what you're doing?"
"No."
"Then why would you do that?"
When he was done, he took my paperwork, told me to sit down, and said he'd be back in a minute.
He ran around, dropping papers, squinting at the bulletin board, coming in and out of the Attorney's Room, calling out the names of other clients, walking back and forth from the various hearing rooms. Finally, he called me into the Attorney's Room.
"Look, if I don't like the judge, are you willing to come back?" He was much calmer, but still condescending.
I was eager to get the whole thing over with and had to think for a second.
He looked at my ticket. "This is a serious ticket," he said.
"I know. That's why I'm talking to you."
"This is six points."
"I believe it's eight points," I said.
He looked at the ticket again. "You're right, I'm sorry, eight points. Let's see who the judge is and if your cop shows up. If I don't like what I see, are you willing to reschedule? You'll just have to pay forty bucks."
"Sure, I guess."
"Have a seat in the main room, give me a few minutes."
A few minutes later, he found me and said the hearing had been rescheduled. He directed me to the cashier's line.
"The woman still has my driver's license," I said.
"No, she doesn't, she gave it to me."
He began fumbling around through his pockets, checking his jacket and his pants, pulling out wads of money, 100-dollar bills folded into a few small bundles, receipts, papers, and business cards. After checking his jacket pockets three or four times, my license turned up in the mix. "There it is," he said, like it was a grasshopper about to jump away, "grab it!"
I took my license, paid the forty-dollar bond, and got another date: March.
The saga continues.
March 7, 2009
As I’ve previously written, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Traffic Violations Bureau are situated side by side on the second floor of a shopping mall in the middle of Brooklyn. In the morning, a single line forms in the hallway, waiting for them to open.
In an endless trickle, people ride the escalator from the first floor to the second, and each one gives the same quizzical look when they reach the top. What is this line for? Is this for the DMV? Where do I go? What do I do? Who do I ask?
At 8:15, a uniformed security guard arrives on the scene, half hip-hop swagger, half U.S. Marine Corps efficiency, and makes his way down the line.
"What are you here for?"
"To register my car."
"Wait right there." With a nod of his head, he moves on to the next customer. "What are you here for?"
"To change my registration."
"Wait right there."
And on he goes.
"What are you here for?"
A hapless, half-asleep guy mumbles something in Spanglish.
"What?" barks the guard.
The guy unfolds a notice he received in the mail and shows it to the guard.
"A hearing? You have a hearing?" the guard says.
"Si."
"Get off my line."
"Sorry?"
"Get off my line."
The guard directs the guy to the other side of the hallway, alongside a jewelry store window, and tells him to wait there. The guy shuffles to his place, and the guard proceeds down the line with his interrogations.
"What are you here for?"
"A hearing," I say.
"Get off my line."
Another security guard arrives to take charge of the new line of cast-offs.
In defiance of the sub-freezing temperature outside, a man in a bleached-white guayabera, bermuda shorts, sandals, and a pair of sunglasses on his forehead arrives at the top of the escalator. His leather face cracks a smile as if he's remembering a funny story he'd been told by his pal Ernest Hemingway. He looks at both lines before asking the second guard where he should go.
The second guard has the same attitude as the first, or at least tries to. If ever he was as large and in charge as the hip-hop marine, those days are long gone. He's old now and frail, missing a few teeth. Pieces of white fuzz rest in his hair. He points to the end of the long line without saying a word.
A veteran of life's battles, the Cuban cracks another smile as if to say, "Don't you know who I am?" and walks to the window, standing in neither line, hedging his bets that he'll be able to charm, elbow, or intimidate his way to the front of wherever he needs to be.
The doors are pushed open from the inside by a public servant, and the two lines shuffle into their respective rooms. I find my name on a list pinned to a cork bulletin board, then look for my lawyer.
For better or worse, I'm being represented by the same old coot who rescheduled my hearing last time I was here. He's in the same well-worn navy blue suit with overstuffed pockets, smelling of mothballs and cologne.
"Do I have your case?" he asks when I introduce myself.
"Yes," I say.
Perplexed and discombobulated, he riffles through a fistful of papers, then asks, "Are you all paid up on this case?"
"Yes, sir."
He checks his pockets, digs into them, pats them from the outside, while mumbling something about a pencil.
"Take a seat," he says, "I'll be with you in a minute."
I sit down on a bench in the main room, watching the faces of people as they walk into and out of the hearing rooms — none of them look happy. My lawyer passes by a few times, each time telling me, "Sit tight," or "Relax," until, finally, he sits with me to review my case.
"Look," he says, "This is a serious ticket. Eight points, a big fine. If I can get the court to agree to amend the ticket to say you were going 30 miles per hour over the limit instead of 32, that's six points and a lesser fine. Are you okay with that?"
"Yes," I say. I'm eager to get it over with.
The lawyer leads me into hearing room number four, and we sit through a few cases before I'm called. The judge seems "fair but firm," as they say, patient with the ones who don't speak English, tolerant of, but unmoved by, the giggles of the young girl who tries to flirt her way to innocence.
I'm finally called. The cop is sworn in and gives his testimony. He's nervous, seems unsure of the circumstances that brought us here — it was seven months ago, and he's written a lot of tickets since then. He riffles through his notebook, turning pages back and forth, and struggles to read his own handwriting. He gives details of his radar gun, when it was calibrated, and so on, and explains "where the incident occurred." The judge asks him to clarify a few points, which he does before adding, "When asked why I was pulling him over, he admitted that he was speeding."
That's not exactly true. When I was pulled over, the cop asked me if I knew what the speed limit was. "To be honest," I said, "no, sir, I don't."
"Do you know why I pulled you over?" he asked.
Putting two and two together, I simply answered with a question, "Because I was speeding?"
I wouldn't exactly call that an admission of guilt, but of course, "anything you say can and will be held against you," and it was.
Although I want to debate the cop's rendition of events, I see no advantage to it and, in any case, it's satisfying enough just to hear the cop stutter and stammer before the judge.
When the cop has finished, my lawyer mumbles a few words that I can barely hear or understand, "If it please the court..."
The judge asks if I agree to the amended ticket, and I say I do, and that's that.
Pay the cashier, and life goes on.
