Cop gives lady speeding ticket then hits on her...She Sues Cop!

Now we have all heard about low cut shirts and talking your way out of a speeding ticket, but this story takes the cake. Times must be really tough out there for a single man.    This police officer steps so far over the line that he's now getting sued.  Read the recent article from ABC News.

Cop Issues Speeding Ticket, Asks Driver for a Date and She Sues Him
-Associated Press

A suburban Chicago police officer allegedly turned a $132 speeding ticket into a pick-up opportunity when he later tracked down the female driver and asked her out, saying the least he could do for the money he’d cost her was to treat her to dinner, according to a lawsuit the woman filed in federal court.
Evagelina Paredes filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Chicago, accusing police officer Chris Collins of violating her privacy, according to the Associated Press. She alleges that after she was ticketed on Oct. 22, Collins searched for her address in the motor-vehicle database and left a handwritten note on the windshield of her car, which was parked outside her apartment, asking her out on a date.

In the note, a copy of which was included in the court documents and was obtained by the Associated Press, the 27-year-old police officer tried to woo Paredes with humor and a seemingly heartfelt plea. “It’s Chris … that ugly bald Stickney cop who gave you that ticket. … I know this may seem crazy and you’re probably right, but truth is I have not stopped thinking about you since. I don’t expect a girl as attractive as you to … even go for a guy like me, but I’m taking a shot anyways.”  “I did cost you $132 — least I can do is buy you dinner,” the note reportedly read.

The scenario is not that far off from the “meet-cutes” of Hollywood romantic comedies. In the 2011 hit “Bridesmaids,” Kirsten Wiig’s character starts a relationship with the traffic cop who let her out of a ticket for a broken taillight.  Arguably, it’s a lot less “cute” when it happens in real-life.

Paredes claims that the note caused her to “suffer great fear and anxiety.” In the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified payment in damages, according to the Associated Press, Paredes alleges that Collins used his position as a police officer to “manipulate” her into going out with him. Collins declined to comment to the Associated Press.

Chiefs Quarterback Sues for lost millions!

If this is true it just goes to show you that you need to evaluate your lawyer before you hire them.  Not every attorney will give you accurate and trustworthy advice.  I suggest that prospective clients review what others are saying about our firm online.  On Google and on Avvo.com

Recent Article on ESPN Chicago

CHICAGO -- Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Kyle Orton and some 20 other NFL players are suing a Chicago law firm for more than $10 million, claiming they received bad financial advice on investing in energy concerns.

The 14-page lawsuit filed this week in Cook County Circuit Court claims that the alleged negligence of Chuhak & Tecson cost Orton and the other players millions of dollars related to energy investments. The firm did not return several messages left Friday seeking comment.  The lawsuit only lists two individuals by name as plaintiffs -- Orton, now 29, a former quarterback for the Chicago Bears and Denver Broncos, and Atlanta lawyer Edward Rappaport. Plaintiffs' attorney Daniel Konicek told The Associated Press the others he represents in the suit are all NFL players he declined to identify.

"I think this says a lot about the vulnerabilities of NFL players -- that they rely on the expertise of others," he said. "They relied on people who were supposed to have their best interests in mind."  In 2005, the law firm encouraged then-rookie Orton and others to set up partnerships that, in turn, would invest in producers and sellers of gas generated at landfills, the lawsuit says. The plaintiffs didn't find out until 2010 that they didn't qualify for tax breaks that Chuhak & Tecson allegedly assured them they would benefit from.  Instead, the investors "suffered millions of dollars in damages, including loss of investment, adverse tax consequences, penalties, expenses and professional fees," the lawsuit claims.

The suit itself doesn't provide an exact figure for how much the parties are seeking in damages, but Konicek said that, combined, it will be more than $10 million.  "This is a lesson to make sure you're dealing with the right people," said Konicek. "These guys thought they were."

Josh Selby playing in a whole different type of Court.

Well we wished him the best.  He bailed on us went to the NBA but we still hoped the best for him.  He made a mistake.   Josh Selby is now facing a marijuana possession charge in Prince George County District Court in Maryland.  It appears that during the lockout Selby got in a little trouble, read below to see what he would be facing on a similar charge in Kansas.


Josh Selby faces Marijuana charge after incident at the University of Maryland.
By: Scott Schroder

Memphis Grizzlies guard Josh Selby faces marijuana charges after being caught during the NBA lockout with the substance at the University of Maryland.

     

Jan 7, 2012 - Josh Selby saw his draft stock plummet last year as NBA teams took note of several off-court issues they thought might be too distracting to deal with once he made the jump to playing professional basketball. The Memphis Grizzlies took a chance on him in the second round, where they were able to get good value based on his talent, but Selby's off-court issues apparently popped up during the NBA lockout.

Selby has been summoned to court on Jan. 25 for an incident that happened at the University of Maryland on Oct. 5, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal (via Pro Basketball Talk). Selby didn't have any sort of comment about the incident, apparently:

"I have no comment about it," Selby said. "It is what it is."

Maryland makes a distinction between marijuana and all other illegal drugs. Possessing or using marijuana is punishable by up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Griz general manager Chris Wallace said he is aware of the charge but the team will withhold judgment.  It was a rough 24 hours for Selby back then. On Oct. 6, just after midnight, Selby also received a ticket for a moving violation described as "failure to obey properly placed traffic control device instructions."

Selby has appeared in four games for the Grizzlies this season, playing 59 minutes and scoring 18 points.

I do not know what punishment he is facing in Maryland.  If he had been charged in Kansas for a similar crime he would be looking at a class A nonperson misdemeanor, up to a year in jail and a fine.

Tough Laws make Kansas Prison more crowded than Missouri Prison

Recent article in the Kansas City Star talks about the need for additional funding in Kansas prisions.  99 new law changes in 6 years making it tougher on people convicted of a crime.  Increasing punishment year over year may not be the answer to reducing crime.

Tougher sentences boost cost of justice in Kansas:  State officials consider early release, prevention methods in response to overcrowding and reduced funds.

By: Joe Lambe of the Kansas City Star

Ninety-nine times over the last six years, Kansas legislators have changed the law to make sure that crime doesn’t pay.  But as tougher penalties pack more criminals into prisons that are already overcrowded, the state is struggling to balance the new costs of justice against needs such as education and social services.

A recent tally showed that Kansas men’s prisons were more than 250 inmates over capacity. In a decade, they’re projected to be short about 2,000 beds. Prisons for women also will exceed capacity in about seven years, according to the Kansas Sentencing Commission.

State officials are considering solutions that will keep the public safe while releasing some prisoners sooner than planned or keeping them out of prison in the first place, said Kansas Corrections Secretary Ray Roberts. So far, the idea of mass releases that some states have turned to is not on the table.
Roberts has three broad options — or a mix of them — in mind: build more prisons, house prisoners in county jails or cut recidivism by helping paroled prisoners. Each idea would cost millions of dollars, he said.
Wyandotte County District Attorney Jerome Gorman said administrators need to find a way around the problem because police and prosecutors will continue to haul criminals before judges.

“We would be opposed to any kind of early release determination by administrators after experts like police, prosecutors and juries have determined what a sentence should be,” he said.  Roberts said there is no easy solution.  “What’s driving the population is 99 changes in sentencing since 2005 — increasing punishment for sex offenders, violent offenders,” he said. Other changes to the law have taken crimes that used to be punished by probation and made them subject to prison sentences.  Also, 27 percent of Kansas prisoners have severe and persistent mental illness, Roberts said. But money for transitional housing and other programs has been eliminated in the last few years.

Roberts is requesting $4.8 million to restore some housing, substance abuse treatment and education programs in the 2013 budget, which starts in July. Such programs controlled the prison population years ago by reducing the number of ex-convicts who returned to custody, but the Kansas Sentencing Commission reports that the current crowding problem comes mainly from tougher laws.

The situation is far less dire in Missouri, which has not exceeded its prison capacity in recent years. Missouri has not projected how many people will be behind bars there 10 years from now, a spokesman said.  Roberts expects the state to spend about $1.5 million through the end of June to house state prisoners in county jails. He wants $2.5 million to cover that expense in the 2013 budget.  Roberts and Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican on the sentencing commission who chairs a House-Senate committee on corrections and juvenile justice, listed some other options:

• Allow more inmates into a drug treatment diversion program, and let them in more often. The program now admits only minor offenders who can use it only once to avoid prison.

• Let all inmates into a behavior program that can shave 60 days off their sentences.

• Colloton is introducing a bill that would promote the Johnson County district attorney’s mental illness diversion program, which allows minor offenders to have charges against them dropped.

Meanwhile, a recent count totaled 8,635 in Kansas men’s prisons — 266 over capacity. And Kansas was also paying a total of $1,640 a day to keep 41 state inmates in county jail cells.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/02/3349648/tougher-sentences-boost-cost-of.html#storylink=cpy

8 Ferrrais, a Lamborghini, and a Prius all involved in most expensive car crash ever.

Two pretty obvious conclusions in this article.
1.  A person that drives a Ferrari most likely is going to speed.
2. A bunch of rich people with supercars are probably going to race on the highway.

Drivers of supercars in Japan crash 'were speeding'
By: Julian Ryall  of The Telegraph

Japanese police are blaming the destruction of eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini in a £2.6 million, 14-car crash on Sunday on excessive speed.

A witness told Japanese television that he saw the parade of supercars travelling at speeds of up to 100mph, which was double the speed limit on the Chugoku Expressway, in southern Japan, due to heavy rain that had made the surface slick.“A group of cars was doing 140kph (87mph) to 160kph,” the unnamed man told TBS News. “One of them span and they all ended up in this huge mess.”

Another motorist described how he narrowly avoided becoming caught in what is likely to be the most expensive car crash outside of a car racing track.“The front car crashed into the left embankment and bounced off towards me,” he said.

In all, a dozen cars have been reduced to scrap metal in the accident, including at least 10 that are among the most expensive and sough-after among collectors.  No fewer than eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini Diablo were among the victims of Sunday morning’s collision, while the other victims were two top-of-the-range Mercedes-Benz, a Nissan GT-R and a Toyota Prius hybrid.

The drivers of the high-performance autos were apparently members of a car collectors’ club out for a less-than-leisurely spin, although it appears that the person behind the wheel of the Toyota Prius was simply in the wrong place when the accident occurred.  Ten men and a woman were admitted to nearby hospitals for treatment, although local police said none of the injuries were life-threatening.  Police declined a request to identify the drivers involved in the crash, although Mitsuyoshi Isejima, the executive officer of the Yamaguchi Prefecture Expressway Traffic Police, was quoted by Bloomberg as describing the drivers as “A gathering of narcissists.”

Police believe the accident was caused at around 10:15am when the driver of a red Ferrari was switching from the right lane to the left lane on a gradual 400-metre curve on the expressway, close to Shimonoseki in the far south-west tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu.  The drivers were reportedly traveling from Kyushu to the city of Hiroshima for a gathering of car enthusiasts.  Local media have reported that the driver of the car that is being blamed for the crash is a 60-year-old businessman from the city of Fukuoka. If he is convicted of dangerous driving that resulted in an accident, he could face a prison sentence of up to three months or a fine of up to Y100,000 (£820).  On the plus side, the car club has not seen its entire collection wiped out at a stroke as at least four other cars managed to avoid becoming entangled in the crash.

Still, it took local police more than six hours to clear the highway of debris and Japanese news programmes have shown repeated shots of the cars scattered across the road.  Footage taken from helicopters above the site showed one of the Ferraris had suffered a crumpled rear-end and had been shunted into the safety barrier alongside the highway. Alongside it, another two red Ferraris had come to a halt alongside each other, although pointing in opposite directions.

A few meters further on, a white sports car had come to a halt with its bonnet forced beneath the crash barrier. Beside the car, four police officers were interviewing two young women and a man.

No one has been yet been charged over the accident.

 

Speeding Ticket Fun Facts including the Fastest, Most expensive, Etc.

Speeding Tickets are not funny.  They often cause frustration and money to the person receiving them.  On the other hand if could be much worse.   Here are a few fun facts about speeding tickets, enjoy!

The fastest speeding ticket in the world allegedly occurred in May 2003 in Texas. It was supposedly 242 mph in a 75 mph zone. The car was a Swedish-built Koenigsegg CC8S, which was involved in the San Francisco to Miami Gumball 3000 Rally.


The fastest convicted speeder in the UK was Daniel Nicks, convicted of 175 mph on a Honda Fireblade motorcycle in 2000. He received six weeks in jail and was banned from driving for two years.

The fastest UK speeder in a car was Timothy Brady, caught driving a 3.6-litre Porsche 911 Turbo at 172 mph on the A420 in Oxfordshire in January 2007 and jailed for 10 weeks and banned from driving for 3 years.

The most expensive speeding ticket ever given is believed to be the one given to Jussi Salonoja in Helsinki, Finland, in 2003. Salonoja, the 27-year-old heir to a company in the meat-industry, was fined 170,000 euros for driving 80 km/h in a 40 km/h zone. The uncommonly large fine was due to Finnish speeding tickets being relative to the offender’s last known income. Salonoja’s speeding ticket was not the first ticket given in Finland reaching six figures.

There are many competing claims as to the first speeding ticket ever issued depending whether the claim goes by the first traffic violation or the first paper ticket ever issued. Great Britain may have the earliest claim with the first person to be convicted of speeding, Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, who on 28 January 1896 was fined for speeding at 8 mph (13 km/h) in a 2 mph zone. He was fined 1 shilling plus costs.

A New York City cab driver named Jacob German was arrested for speeding on May 20, 1899 for driving 12 miles per hour on Lexington street in Manhattan. In Dayton, Ohio, police issued a paper ticket to Harry Myers for going twelve miles per hour on West Third Street in 1904.

Another early speeding ticket was issued in 1910 to Lady Laurier, the wife of Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada, in Ottawa, Canada, for exceeding the 10 miles per hour speed limit.

Among the most unpopular tickets, a mention is deserved of the small municipality of Segrate arranging to put a speed limit between two near-by traffic lights synchronized such that drivers were forced to either break the speed limit or pass with the red. It took months before the hated machines were eventually dismantled by the Guardia di Finanza.

Retro: Minnesota trooper writes 205 mph speeding ticket

This is an older article but a good one.  Turns out the bike this guy was riding was a Honda RC-51 or RVT1000.  The bike is not capable of going over 200mph.  (Trust me I used to own one)  The speed was determined by using an airplane and a stop watch with markers on the road.  Its a pretty inaccurate way to determine speed especially going that fast..

 

Minnesota trooper writes 205 mph speeding ticket

WABASHA, Minn. (AP) — With a State Patrol airplane overhead, a Stillwater motorcyclist hit the throttle and possibly set the informal record for the fastest speeding ticket in Minnesota history: 205 mph.

On Saturday afternoon, State Patrol pilot Al Loney was flying near Wabasha, in southeastern Minnesota on the Wisconsin border, watching two motorcyclists racing along U.S. Highway 61.

When one of the riders shot forward, Loney was ready with his stopwatch. He clicked it once when the motorcycle reached a white marker on the road and again a quarter-mile later. The watch read 4.39 seconds, which Loney calculated to be 205 mph.  "I was in total disbelief," Loney told the St. Paul Pioneer Press for Tuesday's editions. "I had to double-check my watch because in 27 years I'd never seen anything move that fast."  Several law enforcement sources told the newspaper that, although no official records are kept, it was probably the fastest ticket ever written in the state.

After about three-quarters of a mile, the biker slowed to about 100 mph and let the other cycle catch up. By then Loney had radioed ahead to another state trooper, who pulled the two over soon afterward.  The State Patrol officer arrested the faster rider, 20-year-old Stillwater resident Samuel Armstrong Tilley, for reckless driving, driving without a motorcycle license — and driving 140 miles per hour over the posted speed limit of 65 mph.

A search of speeding tickets written by state troopers, who patrol most of the state's highways, between 1990 and February 2004 shows the next fastest ticket was for 150 mph in 1994 in Lake of the Woods County.  Tilley did not return calls from the newspaper to his home Monday. A working number for him could not immediately be found by The Associated Press on Tuesday.  Only a handful of exotic sports cars can reach 200 mph, but many high-performance motorcycles can top 175 mph. With minor modifications, they can hit 200 mph. Tilley was riding a Honda 1000, Loney said. 

Kathy Swanson of the state Office of Traffic Safety said unless Tilley was wearing the kind of protective gear professional motorcycle racers wear, he was courting death at 200 mph.  "I'm not entirely sure what would happen if you crashed at 200 miles per hour," Swanson said. "But it wouldn't be pretty, that's for sure."

Read the original Article here:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2004-09-21-speeder_x.htm