Igor's Traffic ticket

[Gill Ediger]

At 08:11 AM 2/21/2004 -0600, Igor Loving wrote:
> and three guys all in black with big guns. Looked at all my stuff. It must
>have been the bat sticker? They gave me a ticket for no proof of insurance
>which is payable to FEDERAL COURT in Atlanta. They said I could fax the
>proof of insurance a number on the ticket. Ok thats cool enough. 

There is more going on here than meets the eye--not enough information, and
way too many questions left dangling. Here's another Igor message that's
more cryptic than informative.

1) Where the hell were you? My guess is that you were on some federal
property--a national park or parkway, some national monument, BLM or Dept
of Agriculture land, a military post or base, a Border Patrol station, or a
federal court house, etc. Persons suspected of misbehaving on those
premisis will get a summons to federal court in Atlanta or a couple of
other places. You couldn't have just been driving down Duval minding your
own business. It's not that simple.

2) What else were you doing? These guys generally need a 'probable cause'
just like most other cops. Not saying they aren't above making something
up--for national security and all that whitewash BS--but they usually have
some reason for stopping you other than to see if you have liability
insurance papers hidden under the seat. I sorta doubt they were without any
reason to be curious about you. Were you running through baracades at an
Air Force Base or what? 

3) Although most states have within their traffic laws a statute requiring
drivers to have liability insurance, federal agencies which have  roads and
highways within their jurisdiction are also supplied by the feds with
similar traffic laws. The George Washington Parkway is one example of that.
Technically, the winding road up to Carlsbad Cavern would be another. And
I'm sure those laws apply within the boundries of the Border Patrol Station
at Laredo. Surely they include liability insurance. Get a ticket there and
you go to Federal Court.

4) But, I don't think the MIBs hang out at Carlsbad or Border Patrol
stations. Those places have thier own uniformed personnel. Now I have
noticed a great preponderance of Black Suburbans backed into the niches
between baracades now blocking former city streets in Washington, DC in the
several blocks around the Capitol/Senate Office Building/Supreme Court
complex/etc--more than a few of them--and a token number of MIBs standing
on high spots around the Capitol grounds and gazing out amongst the
tourons, sometimes with spy glasses, always with radios, probably with
pistola--maybe mas. But I've not seen them along the Baltimore-Washington
Parkway, not in the Post Offices, and not along the C&O Canal National
Monument. Mostly, I think, they hang out in the kind of places I don't. I
wonder why Igor was. 

I say don't fax them anything from your own machine. Use one at Kinko's or
the library. And you might also want to join a cell phone pool. That's one
where everybody throws their phone into a bag and you reach in and take out
somebody else's and use it for a week then everybody exchanges again. That
way the feds have trouble tracking people and patterns--calling patterns,
travel patterns, payment patterns--and the people you call. These MIBs are
very much like the Germans--the Gestappo. They think systematically--by the
numbers. Anything outa the ordinary and their sensibilities go to shit.
They get disoriented for a while. Ya gotta do what ya can to stress the
system--to throw in more variables than there are potential scenarios in
their play book. Give them plenty to do that's not productive, stuff that
screws up their direction, isn't covered in their standard methods
guidebooks. But you gotta be sure that you're innocent about it, like, be
sure you have liability insurance, but keep the paperwork hidden under the
seat. That'll get them distracted enough that they won't find out what
you're really up to.

I still want to know where you were and why you looked guilty enough of
something that they were obliged to stop you. What's the rest of the story.   

--Ediger