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Problems with the law.

#121
Some cops are professionals who do a tough job and want to serve the public, making the world a better place. Some cops have authoritarian personalities, inferiority complexes, and just like to go on power trips. It sounds like the OP dealt with the latter.

In the scheme of things in life, this isn't a big deal. Nobody died. Nobody went to prison. You'll look back on this incident 15 years from now and laugh. I'd just chock it up to one of those lessons you learn when you're a young adult. As a previous poster said, if you feel an officer is in the wrong - and they sometimes are - you'll get a lot further taking your battle to court than fighting your battle right there in the moment.

But yeah, the "cooling down my fingers" thing: C'mon dude, this is a forum of bass players; give us a little credit. :D
 
#122
LiquidMidnight said:
Some cops are professionals who do a tough job and want to serve the public, making the world a better place. Some cops have authoritarian personalities, inferiority complexes, and just like to go on power trips. It sounds like the OP dealt with the latter.

In the scheme of things in life, this isn't a big deal. Nobody died. Nobody went to prison. You'll look back on this incident 15 years from now and laugh. I'd just chock it up to one of those lessons you learn when you're a young adult. As a previous poster said, if you feel an officer is in the wrong - and they sometimes are - you'll get a lot further taking your battle to court than fighting your battle right there in the moment.

But yeah, the "cooling down my fingers" thing: C'mon dude, this is a forum of bass players; give us a little credit. :D
Click to expand...

Quoted for more truth.
 
#125
If I were you, I would talk to a lawyer. At least they can tell you if it was unlawful of the Cop and may be able to get you out of the ticket and make the county pay for the court costs.

I grew up in a small town where Cops did things like this all the time, sometimes they need something petty like this to snap them back into reality and let them know that this is still sort of a free country. Cops get bored, aggravated with dealing with mostly the worst of the society they live in and tend to let that mentality guide most of their decisions.
 
#126
Misspellings and what not can be amended. While you are free to ask for a dismissal based on that, I wouldn't hang my hat on it. There is very little that is actually fatal to a ticket or summons as long as it is corrected in court. If he doesn't correct it, you may have a chance.
As far as the noise ordinance. Go to court looking like you respect the courthouse. DO NOT tick off the judge by being a smark aleck or trying to make the officer look bad. Simply state why you feel you are not guilty. Ask questions of the officer in court.
Or you could hire an attorney. I wasn't there, but I would bet he didn't give you the ticket for running your fingers over the strings. The ticket is for the actual noise being made before you let him in. As has been mentioned, the easier way to get out of a ticket is to sit down, be quiet and humble. Wait for him/her to leave then run your mouth freely at that point.
 
#127
nickbass79 said:
Cops get bored, aggravated with dealing with mostly the worst of the society they live in and tend to let that mentality guide most of their decisions.
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This is absolutely true, and one of the hardest things for officers to avoid. The good ones have to constantly remind themselves that not EVERYONE is lying cheating or stealing when they speak to them.

The OP's attitude shows through loud and clear though, and when there indeed IS a clear violation of the law, an "attitude" ticket can certainly be earned. In law enforcement training, you are taught to "have your mind made up" if a citation is going to be issued before you even deal with a person face to face, based on the violation and not personality, but, this is the real world.

I tend to be VERY lenient when getting noise complaints, especially with bands, because of my sympathy with musicians, being one and all, however, I'm fairly certain had I been the officer on this call, and the OP acted like I assume he acted (and I admit, I COULD be wrong), I probably would have written him too (although I'd have done it while he was standing in front of his buddies,...I wouldn't put him in the car.

And my mistake assuming it was Blorp. I got all confused. After all, I'm just a dumb cop. :)
 
#129
Ray Salamon said:
Fixed it for ya, Cheeze. Stupid porker... :D
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Thanks Ray! I always have the same response while on duty to "pig" or "porker" comments. I smile, almost breaking into a laugh and say something like, "Really? Pig? Do you know your grandpa probably used that term? Are you telling me you can't come up with a derogatory name that isn't at least 45 years old? No wonder you get hassled by the PO-lice."
 
#130
cheezewiz said:
I tend to be VERY lenient when getting noise complaints, especially with bands, because of my sympathy with musicians, being one and all, however, I'm fairly certain had I been the officer on this call, and the OP acted like I assume he acted (and I admit, I COULD be wrong), I probably would have written him too (although I'd have done it while he was standing in front of his buddies,...I wouldn't put him in the car.
Click to expand...

Every cop that responded to noise complaint made against my band or myself has let me off with a verbal (nonwritten) warning. My old band used to rehearse in my parents garage, and we had a couple complainy type neighbors. The cops showed more frustration at people calling in noise complaints at 6pm on a saturday than they did us for jamming. One of them even carried on a full conversation asking about our band. He said they had listened for the length of an entire song before knocking and that we were pretty good.
 
#131
MatticusMania said:
Every cop that responded to noise complaint made against my band or myself has let me off with a verbal (nonwritten) warning. My old band used to rehearse in my parents garage, and we had a couple complainy type neighbors. The cops showed more frustration at people calling in noise complaints at 6pm on a saturday than they did us for jamming. One of them even carried on a full conversation asking about our band. He said they had listened for the length of an entire song before knocking and that we were pretty good.
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This is much more common than you'd think! I work in a fairly small area, so most of the younger musicians actually recognize me and know I play, which bands I'm playing with, etc. I've actually been asked how to play a certain bass part while on a loud music call! These calls really can be easy. The band either turns down or knocks off for the night ( I often remind them low volume practice can be much more revealing when trying to get parts right), everyone remains friendly, everyone is cool about it, and you have a nice conversation piece next time you see one of the band members at the music store.

I remember VERY WELL, being in bands when I was younger, and getting the police called on us for volume. It definitely stuck with me when an officer was cool, rather than just coming in and screaming at everyone.
 
#132
MatticusMania said:
Every cop that responded to noise complaint made against my band or myself has let me off with a verbal (nonwritten) warning. My old band used to rehearse in my parents garage, and we had a couple complainy type neighbors. The cops showed more frustration at people calling in noise complaints at 6pm on a saturday than they did us for jamming. One of them even carried on a full conversation asking about our band. He said they had listened for the length of an entire song before knocking and that we were pretty good.
Click to expand...

This has been my experience too. We once actually had a cop who one of the guys in the band knew come out and answer the call with his partner. We invited them in and they stayed and listened to 2-3 songs after we'd turned down, and they wound up bringing a few people to our next show!

My general rule is that if a cop is out there on a noise complaint call, they don't want to be there, and they especially don't want to deal with some uppity musician with a chip on his shoulder, so just apologize, turn down or off, depending on the time of night, and go on about your business.
 
#133
Since we are sharing stories about the police responding to noise complaints, here is mine from when I was actually playing bass years ago.

We were asked to play at the Relay For Life, which is a 24 walk-a-thon type event to raise money for cancer research. The event was held outside at a local high schools football stadium. They had bands playing all night, our slot was from 10PM until midnight. About an hour into the set, right in the middle of a song, all of our instruments went silent and all you could hear was the drums. As we looked around to see what was wrong, out from behind the stage comes a police officer and says to us "parties over guys, you're too loud". Then he stands in the front of the stage and yells out to the audience that there will be no more music tonight. As he starts to walk off the stage, our guitar player approaches to express some concern about the charity event being disrupted and the police officer made a comment along the lines of "don't start with me or you'll be going to jail". So we all packed up and went home.

-Mike
 
#134
MJ5150 said:
Since we are sharing stories about the police responding to noise complaints, here is mine from when I was actually playing bass years ago.
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Mine starts kinda like the OP...

Except I knew the noise ordinance... and I knew we weren't in violation... and I knew the cop hadn't in any way attempted to measure the sound level at our property boundary using a correctly calibrated and weighted SPL meter as the city code required.

I was polite, took my ticket, and shut the noise down for the night.

Then I fought the ticket, won, and got to laugh while the magistrate reamed the cop a new one for wasting his time.

It was one of the better uses of a vacation day in my life.
 
#136
MJ5150 said:
Since we are sharing stories about the police responding to noise complaints, here is mine from when I was actually playing bass years ago.

We were asked to play at the Relay For Life, which is a 24 walk-a-thon type event to raise money for cancer research. The event was held outside at a local high schools football stadium. They had bands playing all night, our slot was from 10PM until midnight. About an hour into the set, right in the middle of a song, all of our instruments went silent and all you could hear was the drums. As we looked around to see what was wrong, out from behind the stage comes a police officer and says to us "parties over guys, you're too loud". Then he stands in the front of the stage and yells out to the audience that there will be no more music tonight. As he starts to walk off the stage, our guitar player approaches to express some concern about the charity event being disrupted and the police officer made a comment along the lines of "don't start with me or you'll be going to jail". So we all packed up and went home.

-Mike
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Shut down a Relay for Life!? Wow. That is a big event. He would have been crucified for that here!
 
#137
The event continued, there was just no more live music until the next day.

I was mad at first, but who knows what his day was like up until he was called to handle our noise complaint. People in all occupations can have a bad day for a variety of reasons not pertaining to the actual job or the situation they are in. I'm not brave enough to be a law enforcement officer, so it didn't seem right for me to hassle the guy for doing his job.

-Mike
 
#138
MJ5150 said:
The event continued, there was just no more live music until the next day.

I was mad at first, but who knows what his day was like up until he was called to handle our noise complaint. People in all occupations can have a bad day for a variety of reasons not pertaining to the actual job or the situation they are in. I'm not brave enough to be a law enforcement officer, so it didn't seem right for me to hassle the guy for doing his job.

-Mike
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Ah, I see. Unplugging was still not the way to handle it though.
 
#140
The modifier said:
... as it turns out simply contradicting a cop is enough to win you a backseat.
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So what made it necessary to contradict the cop? You clearly have an attitude problem which was detected by the cop. As long as you take the initiative to create conflict with a cop, you will be similarly rewarded. Maybe someday you will become mature enough and smart enough to realize that, in a situation like that, the cop will always win and you will continue to be the loser.
 

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