Officer D. Hartman, SJPD #3738, Airport Division


Date: September 5, 2003

REASON FOR BLACKLISTING: Falsifying police reports, harassment, and wrongly accusing me of CVC 23103 (misdemeanor reckless driving).

Complaint: On Friday, September 5, 2003 at around 5:15 PM, I drove to the San Jose International Airport and dropped off my boss, who was flying out of town for the weekend. Immediately afterward I continued down the 3-lane wide, one way service road that led past the terminals and out of the airport. Towards the end of the straight I was driving approximately 25 mph in 3rd gear, which is somewhere around 2000 RPM. The road ahead sharply veers right. I look around me, and much to my surprise there is nobody else on the road. I make a mental note of this since there is always traffic on a Friday at 5 PM. I figured what the hell, double clutched and dropped it into 2nd gear and accelerated throughout the right handed curve. Despite the balding Dunlop tires, the car stuck like glue all the way around the bend as my Supersprint exhaust growled loudly. I backed off a few seconds later and shift into 4th, lowering engine revs to a lazy 1100 RPM or so. Glancing at the huge piles of dirt around me (the entire area past the terminal was a construction zone on both sides of the street), I cruise down the service road with not another car in sight. Here's the road where I drove:

About a minute and a half later, I see a SJPD cruiser flying towards me with its lights and siren blaring. I pull over to let him by, then realize that he's following me onto the shoulder. D'oh! The speed limit was 25 mph, I was probably doing 35, so I figured he's getting me for speeding. Right? Erm, not quite. The cop walks over to the passenger window, but I know the drill so I give him my driver's license, registration, and proof of insurance before he even asks for it. He asks if I know why he pulled me over. Stupidly I replied, "Did it have anything to do with that turn back there?" Good one Fred, my brain was telling me. Real smooth. The cop doesn't answer and instead walks back to his Crown Vic. Immediately afterwards, I notice another SJPD cruiser flying from the opposite direction from which I was facing. He cuts across oncoming traffic and drives right in my way, head on. For a second I was thinking, suicide cop! But he slams on his brakes at the last second, sending the Crown Vic into a full nose dive before stopping a foot away from my front bumper. The fat cop gets out of the car, pulls his sagging pants up, and sneers at me before walking back to the cop behind me.

I've seen Cops before. I leave my hands on the steering wheel with the engine off while I am waiting for them to call in my license to see if I have any warrants (which I don't). In fact, I have a clean driving record so I wasn't really worried. Ten minutes pass. Fifteen minutes. My hands are still on the wheel, but I can see the fat cop on a cell phone, pointing all over my car and trying to look under it. Half an hour ticks by, and now I'm starting to fall asleep since I had a long day at work. I'm dozing off and on before the first cop finally walks back to me, a full forty-five minutes after he originally stopped me. He sticks his head into the passenger side and announces matter-of-factly, "I'm going to give you a ticket for reckless driving. I saw you peel your tires out back there and almost run over a few pedestrians."

My jaw dropped. I was so stunned that I didn't know what to think. Imagine waking up one morning and finding an alien sticking a probe up your ass...yeah, that kind of shocking. Reckless driving? That's a criminal charge and comes with jail time. Wait, peeling out? Me? No way. My mind was slowly coming back together. I ask the cop, "Are you sure you saw me peel out?" He nods, then says, "Yeah, I saw the smoke come from your tires." I remember that my car has mixture problems and runs rich, especially at wide-open throttle when nice black puffs of smoke come out of the muffler. I ask the cop if he's sure that the smoke wasn't from the exhaust, explaining the engine's problem. He stammers, "Uh, um, yes...I mean, yes, I definitely saw the smoke from your tires." But what about the pedestrians? "I saw you almost hit one," he says. Who? Was it a man or a woman? What nationality? Age?

No answer.

Yup, I cast a shadow of doubt. Of course the cop couldn't backtrack now, after all, he was giving me a reckless driving ticket based on images that he probably saw the night before on TV. Probably on Cops. He hands me the ticket and tells me to sign it. I read it slowly, going over every box in the ticket. He marked my speed as 40 in a 25, but the two boxes marked LASER and RADAR were unchecked. I ask the cop if he clocked my speed with laser. "No," he mutters, almost under his breath. "Did you use radar?" No answer. The ticket also says that the condition was "heavy traffic," despite no other car on the road. I ask him about that, but before he responds, the fat cop waddles over to my car and yells loudly, "DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM?!" Well, no officer, other than the fact that I wasn't doing anything I'm being accused of. "DO YOU WANT TO GO TO JAIL?" he screams. I guess this guy's the bad cop.

I sign the ticket, and before the first cop leaves, he sticks his head waaay into my car and snarls, "Hey kid, this is the airport. Don't pull that kind of shit around here again." I was about to ask him if he had a hard day checking someone's luggage, but I decide to hold my tongue. There was enough trouble already. But I was damn pissed for NOT peeling out, NOT hitting any pedestrians (there were no sidewalks because of the construction, so where would the pedestrians be?), and most importantly, NOT driving recklessly! This should've been a speeding ticket, goddammit.


ONE MONTH LATER

Fast forward a month and I figure things out. The maximum fine for reckless is 90 days jail and a $1,000 fine. The fine wasn't what worried me, it was the jail time and the criminal record. I shopped a few lawyers in my area and every one charged at least $2,500 minimum fee for a reckless driving defense. Ouch! That's just as much as what I paid for my car. I called the county's public defender's office, and they said that they wouldn't give me a PD until the day of the trial. I didn't like the sound of that, plus I know that all PDs in Santa Clara County assume you're guilty and only try to bargain down your sentence. No dice there, I thought.

Time to bite the bullet. I save some money and hire an attorney out of Burlingame for $2,500, though he agrees to let me pay half now and the rest in monthly payments. I'm pissed because I have to shell out this much money for something that I didn't even do! But hey, this is America, where everyone is guilty until proven innocent. The pre-trial hearing date was set for October 31, 2003, and my lawyer attended that on my behalf. But like all things judicial, when the date came it was rescheduled for a month later, on November 24, 2003.


ANOTHER MONTH LATER

The lazy DA reschedules the pre-trial date for December 22, 2003. I hand over a bag of money to my lawyer.


YET ANOTHER MONTH LATER

The DA admits to jacking off in the bathroom for the past 2 months and asks the judge for yet another continuance, this time for January 26, 2004. Hey, aren't I entitled to a speedy trial? Oh, that's right. This is Santa Clara County. Meanwhile, I FedEx another bag of cash to my attorney.


HAPPY NEW YEAR - ONE MONTH LATER

Finally, on January 26 we get a pre-trial hearing. It's sort of a let's-make-a-deal day that should have been done three months ago since it only takes like 20 minutes, but whatever. The DA, who is a white-haired, decrepit looking white guy with a bright red face and neck, talks to my lawyer privately. My lawyer explains that his client (me) has a clean driving record, has no prior criminal history, is a good student, and admits to speeding, so how about let's drop this to a speeding ticket, save everyone time and money and call it a day. The DA laughs in his face. He points to the police report, which falsely states that I was peeling out and almost ran over a "few" pedestrians, and says that this was an easy case. He goes on to say that he knows that I'm clean, "but I want to go after your client anyway." No deal.

When my lawyer returned and told me the scenario, I didn't know whether to laugh or get mad. My lawyer went back to the DA one more time in vain, trying to get a reduced sentence. The DA said that he'll offer me a misdemeanor exhibition of speed (aka drag racing), which has the exact same jail sentence and exact same fine, but with a different name. This time my lawyer laughed at him. When he came back, he announced that we're going to jury trial. That was fine with me. The date was set for February 24, 2004.

A few days later my lawyer finds out that a different prosecutor was now in charge of my case. She calls him and asks why he didn't take the misdemeanor exhibition of speed offer. He replies that it was a shitty deal and she laughs. According to the police report this case is going to be a walk in the park, she says, disregarding the fact that it's full of shit.

We go over trial strategy and talk about the facts again. He explains that he doesn't really have to prove I'm innocent, but just has to punch enough holes in the cop's story to the point that it raises some doubt. The arguments are centered on: 1.) I have receipts from 2 different shops saying that my car runs rich and black smoke is emitted under load. 2.) There were no witness names in the police report. Cops are quite good at getting witness statements, so if I did almost run over someone, why didn't he take their statement? 3.) The cop was on foot when this happened and had no way of estimating my speed. 4.) It took 45 minutes to write my ticket, which was incredibly long by any circumstances. Why did it take so long? Did the fat cop talk his buddy into giving me something more than a speeding ticket, since I match the profile of a typical Fast-and-Furious street racer?

I wasn't planning to take the stand, and my lawyer agreed. We were ready for trial.


SHOWTIME - OR NOT?

The cop is unable to testify this week because he was moving, so the trial was delayed yet again to March 22, 2004. I am furious. If I was sitting on the toilet one morning and didn't want to testify, can I call the court and have the date moved another month?


NOW IT'S TIME

I arrive to court promptly at 9 AM on March 22, 2004. My lawyer hasn't arrived yet, but then again, neither has the judge. I go outside and read the courtoom roster for today. There were six other cases in that department and all of them were multiple count misdemeanor and/or felony charges. I was the only one with a one count charge, and a relatively minor one at that. I go back inside and wait. The woman DA is nowhere to be found, but instead a young Indian-American guy is there. I hear him talking to another prosecutor and he's complaining about his caseload. Ah, a good sign.

My lawyer arrives and so does the judge, the Honorable Thomas Hastings. He orders everyone to sidebar and asks if both parties (for all cases) can agree to an agreement. My attorney pushes for me to get off with a speeding ticket, but this time the DA bites. Excellent. When my case is called, I enter a plea of no contest to one count of speeding, an infraction. The judge accepts the plea and fines me $20, plus a $65 court fee. Whoa! I was taken aback at his generous sentence. While seemingly stern, the judge probably realized that this case should never have gone this far and just wanted me out of there.

I suppose it was fitting that I was lucky enough to get a kind judge, but it should never have happened in the first place. I'm still out $2,500 for absolutely nothing, and while some say I should be happy that I stayed out of jail and still have a clean record, it should never have happened in the first place. It also goes to show that the police can really do whatever the hell they want and that their actions can cost you thousands of dollars, even if you never committed any crime.

Beware of the San Jose Police Department and the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office.