This just in from Sacramento
My friend Bill sent me the following email the other day, describing his girlfriend’s recent experience with the Sacramento Police Department after she was hit in a very minor “right hook” incident. She was not injured.
After her accident, the cops wrote a nice little summary of the event, cited the woman for failure
to yield, and sent Deb a seven page paper version of a police report that was obviously spit out by a very comprehensive and searchable database. The software automatically produces a stick-figure bicycle upon which the cops can mark damage when they enter the vehicle type. The woman’s insurance company was caught in the firm grip of objective documentation and came crawling to give Deb $750 to dispense with the matter. All in a city that has yet even to consider applying for the gold standard, much less platinum.
There is a lot here to note. One thing that struck me was the part about the police sending her the police statement. Tucson doesn’t even mail police reports to next of kin after their loved ones are struck and killed by impaired drivers–they make grieving family members schlep to the police station and pick them up.
And don’t get me started on the searchable database! Tucson PD destroys the electronic copies of its police narratives, rendering it forever impossible to conduct electronic searches on them.
Then there is the matter of the care the Sacramento PD took to cite the driver and accurately describe the incident. I have cases here in Tucson where the cyclist was cited for failure to yield when drivers cut directly into their path without right-of-way, and the Tucson Police Department has also written to me that they do not believe officers act improperly when they fail to cite drivers in right hook accidents, even where there are witnesses who say the driver failed so much as to use a turn signal (much less look).
It’s this kind of thing that keeps me being a critic rather than a supporter of our platinum application, and keeps me thinking we have some steps still to take here in Tucson.
–Erik Ryberg