I See Rude People by Amy Alkon

Author:Amy Alkon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2010-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

Wait. A letter? I love it. Crime-stopping by pen pal. And what happens when the guy gets the letter, he just writes, “Nope, you must be mistaken!” and mails it back?29

As I’d expected, the police couldn’t use the copy of the tape I’d made them (evidence rules—lest it’d been tampered with). Officer H. needed to get a copy directly from Whole Foods—just a mile or two from the police station. I called every few days to ask whether he’d gotten it. Finally, almost a month after I made the police report, he did. Well? He said he’d brought Laine in to view the tape.

“What?” I couldn’t help myself. “You don’t show the guy the evidence!” I exclaimed.

He got angry. “Don’t tell me how to do my job!”

I apologized—and I was sincerely sorry, mainly that I’d scored him as the cop on my case.

He then told me, “Even after viewing the videotape, he’s not admitting or denying that he hit your car.”

And? And that’s that? He told me it was the city attorney’s decision whether to take the case any further. Maybe that would happen, maybe not. None-too-pleased, I took Laine’s insurance information from Officer H. and called the company, Mercury Insurance. They denied my claim. I spent about two hours fighting with their agent on the phone and she resubmitted it. On February 4, they sent me a letter calling their investigation “incomplete,” and encouraged me to make a claim with my own insurance company—meaning I’d be paying my $500 deductible and maybe end up seeing an increase in my insurance premium. Nuh-uh. No way. I refused to let up, and they finally made arrangements to fix my car. With some wrangling, I even got them to rent me a hybrid while mine was in the shop. (Why should I pollute the air unnecessarily just because some jerk they were unwise enough to insure did a number on my car?)

I was still disturbed by Officer H.’s intimation that it was sort of iffy as to whether the guy would be prosecuted. Silly me, thinking all I had to do was track down a hit-and-run driver, present the police with a neat package of evidence, and the guy would be brought to justice. A lawyer-friend gave me the name of one of the deputy city attorneys, Marsha Moutrie, and told me to write up the case, send it to her, and ask her to have her office prosecute the guy. And so I wrote. And so they prosecuted.

On May 15, 2005, in “Airport Court,” the new criminal court near LAX, Leo Laine stood before Judge Bernard Kamins and pled no lo contendere30 to a misdemeanor hit-and-run. (Had I been injured, he would’ve been charged with a felony.) Judge Kamins placed Laine on 24 months’ probation and fined him $717 plus “restitution” (the cost, paid by his insurance company, of fixing my car). Laine also did one day of jail time. Amazingly, the guy seemed remorseless, glowering at me in court. Hey, old man, I didn’t hit your car.

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