Good lawyers are hard to find.
My trouble began in late July. The day I learned a colleague had taken his own life, was the day I was in a minor car accident in Longmont, Colorado. Not the best day I've had. My life is just like that.
Listening to Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35," my daughter and I were navigating commuter traffic at rush hour while heading to a poetry reading in Boulder. We were also discussing her recent efforts to learn to drive, how serious she had to be, and just how bad things could get if she wrecked the car.
Then ...wham! I wrecked the car. My life is just like that.
Three drivers got out onto the meridian on Hover street. Two drivers inspected their cars to see that no damage had been done. The third driver, the one from Nebraska with a teenager laughing maniacally in the passenger seat, looked to the horizon for inspiration. All she saw was a Red Robin and a Caribou Coffee shop.
Two drivers didn't think we needed to call the police. Unfortunately, the driver who looked like Eric Clapton had already called them. When they arrived, I learned a really important thing about law enforcement and the City of Longmont: traffic law is driven by insurance lobbyists, and their point system for infractions is a rubric designed to make the city and insurance companies money.
Okay, I didn't learn this at that exact moment. Regardless of the facts, particularly those surrounding the second driver and how he had cut in front of me and reduced my stopping space, the police officer in charge of our "event" was required to issue me, the final driver in the chain, a ticket. I was handed a four-point infraction, labeled a "careless driver," and told to have a nice day.
But the ticket wasn't just a ticket. It was summons. I was given a court date and told to return to Longmont on Sept. 17.
The new City of Longmont Courthouse is a state-of-the-art facility that didn't come to be without local controversy. Over budget and plagued with construction controversies (like a ventilation system that didn't work until a separate contractor was hired to fix the errors the first contractor made), the building itself stands as a tribute to modern construction and city management. The general public has mixed emotions about the courthouse and city officials, largely due to the Longmont Main Street construction hoopla.
But that's neither here nor there, really. When I returned in September, I already knew I was headed to a kangaroo court. What I didn't know, what I couldn't know until after I had passed through security after a bag inspection, was that the courthouse wasn't the only thing that had been renovated. It seems the very nature of justice and community management had been refurbished, too.
After receiving a paper with my options on it, I was asked if I wanted to talk to a prosecutor before my hearing. Of course I did: I'm not a careless driver. In my family, I'm referred to as "Granny McCautious." I've never received a speeding ticket. I rarely break the rules - cars have always been serious things to me. So I wanted my chance to point to my clean record and negotiate a dismissal of the charges.
I was then told to enter "Courtroom B," and that's where I learned there were 30 other people waiting for their chance to speak back to the city government. The courtroom was modern, and the judge's bench looked like something one would find at IKEA. The carpet and the walls were powder blue. Windows were framed with white vinyl. There were five circlular speakers along the north and south walls. The room seemed sterile, surgically precise, and painfully modern.
Our wait for justice was interrupted by the court clerk who ordered us to stand via an intercome. Obedient citizents, we stood, and the judge's voice rang through those speakers. She told us our rights, and the ways and rules of her court. Those of us in the gallery looked at each other, confused. Alarmed.
After proceedings began, we just sat there, staring, worried, until the prosecutor showed up. He took files to a table and sorted through them like Rocky Balboa sorted beef carcasses. After quickly reading a file, drumming his fingers on the table, he would call a name. Papers would be signed. The person would pass by the gallery on his or her way to another room, still looking confused, still exchanging looks with the rest of us.
When my name was called, a woman in a pink-flamingo bowling shirt had just handed the prosecutor another stack of folders. I quickly jotted down, "Pink Flamingo Clerk" on the top of a piece of paper I then crammed it into my writer's notebook before coming face-to-face with the City of Longmont.
"Here's what I can do for you," he said. "I can knock this down to a one-point infraction if you come back in October to go to traffic school."
"I can't afford to keep coming back here. Traveling from Lincoln, Nebraska is costing me $80 each way. Besides, this is a default infraction charge, more about policy than what actually happened. Let me tell you - "
"Okay," he interrupted, "How about a 2-point infraction and you'll be done with it? Unless you want to go to trial."
I shrugged. Weighing the options that were more about finances than justice, I decided to cut my losses. Clearly, we weren't negotiating truth or justice. This was a financial negotiation, and not an argument.
"Fine," I said.
"The thing is," he leaned in, "there isn't a 2-point charge for what happened in your case, so you'll have to be charged for something else."
"Something else I did?"
"Well, no, just something else. Let's see," he said, skimming a sheet in his folder, "There are 2-point charges insurance companies like more than others, and we don't want your rates to go up, right?"
"Right."
"So what I'll do for you," he said, "Is give you this one. Yeah, that works. How does 'failure to signal' sound?"
"Like a trumped up charge."
"What?"
I looked down at the table. "Fine."
The prosecutor then completed a form. After he finished, he handed it to me and told me to step into courtroom A. "There's just one thing I have to ask," he said, "Why do you want a pink flamingo clock?"
Shifting my eyes back and forth, I didn't know what he meant or how I should answer. "Huh?"
He pointed to my notebook. "There," he said, "I see your pink flamingo clock there. Are you buying one?"
"Oh yeah, I'm buying something."
In courtroom A, Judge DeFray told me the system was flawed, that she understood I was being charged with and pleading guilty to something I didn't do in order to find the right penalties the City felt I should pay. "The system knows it's flawed," she said, "and the system is okay with this."
I instantly thought of Neo, and The Matrix, and I really wished I could be Trinity and look and be that badass. Trinity would plead guilty to "failure to signal." She flash some symbiotic meaning, some digital bird, and then blow out a door or something.
Instead, I was handed down a judgment. "I suppose you were driving on a Nebraska license," the judge said.
"Yeah, I'm from out of town."
"Well, I'm giving you a $100 fine plus $30 in court costs."
Wow, I thought, the City of Longmont sure is generous. City officials want to do things for me, and give things to me that all require some sort of loss on my part. I found their rhetorical choices maddening, and I didn't know what to say. I also started thinking about how the city functions as a cultural controller. If this were a typical day in traffic court, and court meets twice a week, and the fines hovered around $150 for each person going through (about 60 -80 each time, according to the clerk), then the City of Longmont generates more than half a million dollars each year in traffic fines.
That's a lot of doing things. That's a lot of freakin' money. Unfortunately, it's not justice.
As I reported to the clerk's window to write a check, I thought about Atticus Finch. I thought about all those tropes that go with the American sense of justice. I thought about what my mother would say had she been in court, too. I wondered if others would find the Longmont approach to court as horrifying and dehumanizing as I did.
Before signing my check, I scrawled, "McJustice" on the memo line. And as I left, as I bounded across the street, I totally signaled ... with both fingers.
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