To Whom Much is Given, Much is Required.
I recently got pulled over for having an expired inspection sticker. Actually, I had a rejection sticker (brakes), but those are only good for 15 days or so. Mine was four months old.
So the cop pulls me over and asks the usual: license and registration. I hand them over, thinking to myself, "Let's see what that does!" I have, you see, a Commercial Drivers License (CDL), Class B, with Passenger Endorsement and Air Brakes, for driving buses for Blacksburg Transit. That means, of course, that I can get special treatment.
The cop goes back to his car and does whatever they do, presumably a complete background check. When he comes back, he chews me out by saying, "I see you have a Commercial Driver's License. And yet your inspection is four months overdue. That looks bad." So much for special treatment!
And then I remembered: to whom much is given, much is required. Instead of thinking what privileges my CDL gives me, I should really be thinking of my responsibilities. A person with a CDL should be all the more conscientious about following traffic rules!
$65 later, I'm legal again. And if I'd had my car inspected on time? It would only have taken $15. Hopefully, lesson learned.
In Christ.
posted by Adrian C. Keister @ 10:37 PM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
. . . which is why it bothers me quite a bit when policemen use their position to get tickets written off or erased from their record. Shouldn't they, because of their position, be held to a higher standard, if anything? I remember being quite aghast when my government teacher, who was a former policemen, unashamedly relayed to my class the time he caught a sheriff in a DUI and let him off free - a "job perk" he called it! One of my friends has a brother-in-law who is a policeman, and his wife was telling us that he refuses to wheedle his way out of a ticket because of his job. Yay for him!
Okay, off my soapbox.
Well, you seem to have said it all. I don't really feel much need to reply. TIOC?
In Christ.
Yes, agreed to TIOC :).
Yep. I agree wholeheartedly. I have a lead foot, so I tend to get pulled over quite frequently.
As a former prosecutor and current attorney for a number of police officers and police departments, I am part of the law enforcement community. When I was a prosecutor, I was even pulled over in the very county in which I was considered the "second highest ranking law enforcement officer." But, unlike many of my colleagues, I would never ever let it be known during a traffic stop that I have any connection to law enforcement.
I simply tell the officer the truth (usually that I wasn't paying attention). Often they use their discretion to let me off the hook anyway (I think because I am very polite and possibly because I am female). But it's always as a regular citizen, not because I have tried to get special treatment.
Reply to thf:
I applaud your honesty. "Pulling rank" is really quite detrimental to the moral health of our society. The question is this: is the king above the law or not? Samuel Rutherford wrote his book Lex Rex to show that indeed the king is most definitely not above the law. Far from it. He should be the most zealous in keeping it. C. S. Lewis had a good perspective on this in The Horse and his Boy, when King Lune wants to make Cor king instead of Corin. It's a good passage.
In Christ.
Thanks!
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