Metro Pulse/Gamut/Traffic Court

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A Night In Traffic Court

by George Logan

I am writing tonight only because there's nothing else to do. There is no eating allowed in this place, no drinking. No conversation, no playing of cards. No smoking. I don't smoke, but tonight I would smoke if I could.

We unfortunate 150 are instructed to remain seated in this windowless room as uniformed men with guns pace back and forth in the front of the room. We don't know whether it's light outside, or dark; rainy, or clear. It is not our business to know. It is not our business to stand, or talk, or play cards, or listen to radios, or wear hats. Our duty is to sit, facing forward, and wait for our names to be called.

We wait for the arrival of a man in a black robe. He will sit in judgment of us all. The men with guns will watch us until he does.

Last month, the policeman had made it sound like a simple thing. Just go into City Court and talk to the judge, he said. Show him that you've got insurance. He gave me an appointment, 5:30 Thursday. It seemed considerate, to put it after work. He made it sound like they'd be waiting for me.

I considered bringing my 12-year-old daughter. She has never met a judge before. But tonight she had homework. I left her at home and told her I would be back soon.

We were to be here at 5:30. I was here on time. But for the first half hour I sit and wait, there is no one in the judge's chair. Up there three or four policemen are talking. They are the only ones in this crowded room who are smiling.

I read the Metro Pulse. I read the whole thing. I was saving the crossword for tomorrow, but I start it, and wonder how much I can get done before the judge straightens out my insurance difficulty. I had insurance. I even had an insurance card my insurance agent had sent me, and I was able to find it to show to the policeman. But my insurance card did not have an expiration date on it. When he had pulled me over to give me a warning about rushing through a yellow light, the policeman had told me that I must have an insurance card with an expiration date on it.

The bench is hard. I am considering a four-letter word that is an "expression of regret." I can think of many.

At length a policeman begins shouting out names, asking for pleas. Guilty? Not guilty? I didn't really think of myself as either. This was, I thought, a minor thing, a clerical thing.

The policeman barks the names like a dog would bark them and, like a dog, mispronounces several. He pronounces Jiminez as if it's Jiminy Cricket's proper name. A Russian immigrant has to answer to the name Valda-murr. The policeman would pronounce it the same way if President Vladimir Putin were seated here among us. He would pronounce it the same way if Nabokov or Horowitz or Lenin were here. Or even Vlad the Impaler. Vlad the Impaler would pale before this policeman. He would answer to the name Valda-murr.

His mispronunciations seem willful. He has a gun, and he pronounces the names however he likes.

When my name comes up, he pronounces it correctly, which is a disappointment. I say, "No contest." I didn't have any reason to say that, except that it sounded less of a commitment than "guilty" or "not guilty."

I finish the crossword.

The judge arrives at 6:19. He talks with a man in a tie. We can't hear anything they say. At 6:26, he's talking quietly to someone else. It's only a muffled murmur. At 6:28, someone else is talking to the judge. Finally, at 6:39, five people leave the room. At 6:53, eight people leave. Whether our comrades are leaving for freedom or for deeper confinement, we are not to know.

We sit quietly and listen to nothing. The air is stifling, the room slightly too hot. This is taking longer than I thought it would. I am grateful that I did not bring my daughter.

The armed policeman up front has been silent since he called the roll. Suddenly he is not. "Remove yore hat in court!" he shouts into the audience. All heads turn in the direction of his attention. After a moment's stunned delay, one young man wearing a white tractor cap pulls it off.

The policeman's voice was not a friendly voice, but I was grateful to hear it. It was the only sentence I heard anyone pronounce for a long time. It played over and over in my mind, like a famous saying. Remove yore hat in court. Remove yore hat in court.

I have read everything I brought to read. There is nothing to do but study the faces of the condemned. One man with an impertinent beard looks like a Confederate infantryman. A woman's black hair was once dyed blonde, perhaps sometime last year, grown out black now, four inches from the roots. One elderly man looks very much like Dred Scott. Another troubled man looks like Bartolomeo Vanzetti. I wonder if he has a bomb. I begin to hope that he has one.

The policeman speaks again, and again I listen in gratitude: "If you're driving a black Dodge Aries, you left yore lights on."

Unexpectedly a male voice speaks from the back. "Is there a fine for that?"

There is laughter in the crowd, closed-mouth guffaws, and for a moment the heckler is a celebrity. He is David Letterman, he is Jon Stewart. He is the soul of our impossible aspirations to leave this place.

The armed policeman is unamused, looks back at the audience. His look seems to say, If I learn who said that, I will shoot him.

A boy in the pew in front of me wears a bracelet that looks like it was made from a smashed silver spoon. He seems restless, perhaps mad. "Do what you want to do," he says to his companions, and he leaves. However, by 7:20 he is back. He sits, rocking. He has a butane lighter. He begins flipping it. The lighter emits a small blue flame. First he keeps the blue flame to himself, holding it close as one might hold a girl. His companions look at it enviously. Then he holds it out, touches it to the wooden back of the pew in front of him. He stops just as it starts to smoke. Then he begins to flip it higher, above his shoulder where it would be visible from the front, if only the policeman and the judge were looking.

But no one is looking at us at all. As far as we know, we no longer exist in any form.

Two hours after we arrived, longer than the length of a bad movie, there are about 100 of us still sitting here, faces forward, saying nothing.

At 8:08, the judge speaks loudly enough to hear one word: "recess." A few go out to smoke. Those who don't smoke have nothing to do. I walk outside, grateful for fresh, cool air, and the skyline of a city that seems more distant than I remembered. I look at the back of the Coliseum. Some people are down there, in some exit area, laughing. The nature of their activity is not clear. They may be just emptying garbage or something. Whatever it is, their esoteric pursuits seem fascinating and enviable.

Back inside, just before the judge arrives, it is 8:30. We have been here three hours. Scribbling in the margin of my newspaper, I calculate how much it would cost to hire 100 people to come to a place and sit for three hours. Not even counting the 50 who have left at various times. Just for us 100 who are still here, at minimum wage, assuming it's not considered overtime—though for most of us, who worked all day, it would be overtime. $1,545.

Of course, most of us make more than minimum wage. I bet even the aspiring arsonist with the bent-spoon bracelet makes more than that. At $10 an hour, the bill for this evening so far would be $3,000. At $25 an hour, it would cost $7,500.

The judge doesn't seem to mind it too much. He's probably making $100 an hour. To hire 100 judges to sit in this court for three hours, it would cost $30,000.

But we're not hired to sit here. And judges rarely have to go to traffic court.

The crowd is sparser, now, and I stand up and walk carefully forward. I step gingerly and wonder if choosing another seat is in violation of court rules. But the watchman ignores me.

I sit down behind a shaven-headed man near the front. I was hoping to get close enough to be able to hear better. Just hearing the cases would help pass the time. But I can't. Even up front, what I hear from the bench is still just muttering, with an occasional discernible word: "Seatbelt." "Skidmarks."

At a quarter to 9, about half of the original audience is still in the room. Now some are sighing, some looking at watches, some holding their faces in their hands. One woman is weeping. There is more mumbling, general conversation than before. I wonder if there will be a revolution. If all of us were to rise up and once and attack the guards, some of us would die. But the policemen don't have enough bullets for all of us.

The shaven-headed man in front of me has several scars on his scalp. Though it appears to have healed some years ago, one of them is bleeding just a little. He's talking to an older man with a square face and low eyebrows who looks like Pat Robertson. "I've been saved, but I've never been baptized," the bleeding man says. Robertson seems to have a solution to the man's difficulty.

At 9:03, they call my name. After my long wait, now I have an opportunity to get up and wait in a line. Standing, walking before an audience, seems like an athletic feat. I am proud of my prowess.

When I wait more than three or four minutes at the bank teller, she always apologizes. "I'm sorry you had to wait," she says. I always say, "It was nothing, I do it all the time." Apologies are for when you have to wait three or four minutes. When you wait three or four hours, I have found, nobody apologizes.

Standing in line, things move quicker. At 9:20, I get my chance to meet the judge who has been the center of attention for hours. It is like meeting Oz.

I show the judge my proof of insurance, and he seems satisfied. But there is a surprise. I'm also being charged for a "red-light violation." I explain to the judge that the officer himself told me I didn't really run a red light: the officer just didn't like the fact that I accelerated under a yellow light, and that I should not do that. He told me he pulled me over to warn me to be careful. I agreed, and we parted ways. I told the judge that I did not run a red light, and I would publicly swear to that fact on any religious tome of his choice.

The judge says the paper says I ran a red light. Because I did not plead not guilty, they had not called in the officer. Fortunately, if you can be fortunate about anything in traffic court at 9:30 at night, the policeman is in the neighborhood.

The officer arrives. He is very young, with flushed cheeks. He reminds me of the tin woodsman. He is friendly, as he was when he pulled me over. And he admits he doesn't remember me or the incident. But he says he wouldn't have marked "red-light violation" unless I ran a red light.

I argue, and he calls me out into the foyer, the stark waiting place in the front. No one is there now. About me running the red light, we agree to disagree.

Back at the bench, after another short wait, the judge hears the officer say the same things he told me. Then he asks for my defense. I tell him I had heard the officer say I did not run the red light. I point out that there were some errors on the warrant: the policeman wrote down the wrong year, for one thing, and he misspelled the make of my car. It is a hasty defense, cobbled together in seconds, but, I think, a clever one: I have heard people get off felony drug busts for minor errors in a warrant.

And, I say, the officer was several car lengths behind me when I crossed the intersection: How he could tell if I was running a red light, anyway? You don't ask the backfield ref to decide whether it's a touchdown.

My case convinces me. I have had a clean record probably since before this policeman was born. He seems nervous; I don't feel nervous.

The judge looked tired. Is that all, he asks.

Yes, your honor, I answer.

Guilty, the judge says. I think you ran the red light.

The floor turns. The light fades. After a dread pause, the judge says he will suspend fines if I kept clean for a month. He leaves the rest of my fate with the cop, who says I seem like a nice enough guy. He does not know me well. The judge decides not to charge court costs, either. I say, "Thank you, your honor."

At 10:01 p.m., I walk out of traffic court into the dark parking lot, back to the car I had not seen since that sunny afternoon. I was guilty in the eyes of the law. I feel more grateful than I would have expected to feel after four and a half hours. It could have been worse. I assumed the judge had commuted my sentence to time served.