Logan is smaller than I realised: Why I lost in court
To the Editor:
Don’t get caught speeding. Starting in May all traffic citations were hiked up 30 dollars across Utah. It’s harder to win a case involving money in a small town, but Logan isn’t that small is it? Well, for me 100 dollars for only 10 over is not only unreasonable, that’s a month’s groceries… and I’m innocent so this ticket had to be disputed.
In court the prosecuter and policeman did a little tag team, I think that they mentioned me speeding somewhere, but mostly they talked back and forth about how he calibrated his radar to death, and if his radar had a reading at all that it was the word of God or better.
When it was my turn to question the policeman, a title he has held now for six whole months, I knew that my only shot was to show that I was significantly beyond the suggested usage of this radar machine at the time of his using it.
First, the officer agreed that I was 2 and 1/2 blocks away when he clocked me at the offending speed. I then asked him the range of use suggested for the device he used. He said it was from 100 to 300 feet, and he affirmed, that my car was 300 feet from him at the time of the offense. See where I’m going? Well the judge sadly did not.
I then asked the young policeman how many blocks are in a mile in the grid called Logan, and I suggested to him the number eight (anyone with an odometer can verify this). He said in his own way that he didn’t have a clue. I then asked that prosecution would stipulate to this, and in his way he also said he hadn’t a clue.
I was dum-founded, 2 and 1/2 blocks away, and yet I was only 100 yards away. I must have sounded crazy, trying to show that based upon the officer’s testimony, I was more than 4 times the accepted range of his radar. Well this judge, bless her heart apparently doesn’t watch much football or go to track meets, and in finding me guilty saw nothing wrong with believing one hundred yards was the same as one quarter mile plus.
Well, the conclusions of a judge must be upheld as law, and so by law, we must conclude feet are bigger in Logan? Ha! or the opposite and much more plausible explanation for all this: Logan is far smaller than it seems.
Please let me know if you intend to publish this article. This monetarily depleted month against my better judgment I’ll be eating Ramen, instead of instant pizzas, it would be some consolation to my sick stomach, if this failure in government were to entertain a few reasonable people.