Questions from 2009
I'm originally from Webster
City, Iowa, I moved to Ankeny a couple months ago. While I was living in Webster I started having problems with a police
officer, the house I lived at was known as a party house, and this certain police officer was there constantly, everytime
he was there he always tried to accuse me of something I wasn't doing such as drinking underage or vandalizing things, each
time I proved him wrong, and made sure he knew that I wasn't the one doing such things. A few weeks after we started
having problems with each other, he followed me through town one night for quite awhile, then pulled me over to tell me that
my back brake light in my rear windshield was not showing through due to tint, and that it HAD to show. After he discussed
that matter with me, he then asked me for my license, registration, and insurance cards, I gave him all of the following only
for him to tell me that my insurance cards were expired, which I had no clue of, so he wrote me a nice healthy $342 fine for
it. I'm a broke college student, just barely making it as is, and I honestly felt as if I was being harrassed due to
the police officer and I's past relationship. Can I fight this fine, or no?
You have a right to fight any citation
you are given. You are "innocent until proven guilty". You need to look at the incident as a whole. Why were you stopped?
Since the stop is legitimate, the officer has a right, by law, to make sure you are legal to drive, both you and the vehicle.
In checking your insurance, you only have expired cards in your vehicle. The law also states that you MUST maintain current
proof of your insurance cards in your vehicle while it is on the road. It sounds like the citation is a good one. But you
do have the right to fight the citation.
Is it legal for an officer to look inside a mail box
and grab your mail and look at it?
There are too many circumstances to answer
this question directly. Where exactly is the mailbox located? Is the mailbox open or closed? Is there mail sticking
out of the mailbox? Was the officer responding to a call about some suspicious activity with the mailbox? Is there a
crime being investigated? Is there a search warrant? The answer could be yes and it could be no, but it depends
on many things.
Is it against the law to allow two eleven year old
boys to sit in the car with the door locked? Not to cold and not to hot, engine not running, for 10-15 min while going into
mall with daughter age 13? Also the boys were playing video game and watching over 3 yr old sister in car seat this is in
michigan.
This sounds like it could fall under the
crime of child neglect, but there are too many factors to draw a conclusion to your question. First, how mature are the boys?
How mature is the 3 year old? What kind of community do you live in? How busy of a mall are you talking about? And there are
many other questions that would need to be answered. You need to talk with the Department of Human Services. They have
guidelines (not laws) on how old a child should be in order to watch over a younger sibling. The safest way to handle
it is to always bring your kids with you. You'd hate for something to happen and wish later that you wouldn't have left them
alone.
