I am astonished to see that NY DMV fined me $130 ($50 fine + $80 Surcharge) for failing to show current insurance proof. I had both current and old insurance proofs in the same envelope because the new insurance proof comes long before the old one expires. By mistake, I gave the officer expired document. After getting the ticket I went to the officer and showed him my current insurance. He said he already wrote the ticket, so he couldn’t do anything. By the way, he was issuing another ticket to another motorist then (less than a minute after he issued my ticket). I guess he was fulfilling his quota for the day.

This is just an excuse to make money. The officer could ask me for current insurance proof but he didn’t. When I told him why he didn’t and his response was that that was not his job and it was my duty to present current documents when asked. I even heard they have a way of finding out whether a motorist has insurance coverage or not using insurance companies’ database. Also, they spend a lot of time in their car before they hand you a ticket, during this time it is possible to make a call to verify insurance coverage. Anyway, because of my insistence he said he would write a note that I showed him current insurance document after he wrote the ticket. Guess what, he dutifully (he has a duty to make money for his employer) forgot to write the note. I wasn’t in the court but the letter said the judge talk to the police officer and the final verdict was – I am guilty as charged, so I have to pay $130 or my driving privilege in the state of NY will be suspended. I am guessing the officer said in the court that I didn’t have the insurance proof because he didn’t write the note and it was difficult to remember an incident after about two months.

They are very generous to let me appeal the decision for a fee of $10 but I have to pay for the transcript of the original hearing which is only $50. Therefore, even if I win I lose $60 in the process and most likely they will find me guilty again anyway. The reasons of these guilty verdicts are – judges are about to set world record in convicting motorists. On March 12, 2012, Gillian Kleiman and Josh Margolin reported in an article, ‘You can’t win!’ Toughest NY judge, that “Levine, the senior judge at the DMV Traffic Violations Bureau in his borough (Staten Island), had the state’s top conviction rate for at least both 2010 and 2011, according to statistics obtained by The Post. For the year just ended, his court posted a 77.8 percent conviction rate vs. a statewide rate of 63.1 percent and a citywide figure of 62 percent. Levine generated more than $1 million in fines last year and $617,000 in surcharges — easily surpassing his peers around the state.”

One aggrieved motorist said, “I don’t think the judge was listening at all,” Yamilette Melendez, 31, told the Post after getting a $600 fine for allegedly not wearing her seat belt and not having her kids buckled up. “These cops are terrorists in blue, and they get away with blatant lying because, honestly, I don’t feel like the judge is listening.” Another anonymous writer commented, “This judge in the picture is a jerk. I appeared before him twice for the same stop sign ticket. Both times the cop didn’t show up. But you know what..at the beginning of each session he announces to defendants that all cops are present and advises anyone who wish to change their plea to guilty to step up. But when I went up to him, he whispers to me that my officer did not show up, and gave me another date. The second time, he did the same thing and he quietly dismissed my case because my accuser was absent again.”

This was the worst injustice that was ever handed down to me. Technology is advance enough that they can find out easily whether anyone has insurance or not, especially when “big brother” is capable of keeping record of everyone’s Internet activities and phone conversation. I wish to believe “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time” and someone will overturn this one day.  But before it happens, be careful guys, show the proper documents to these people with guns or you are screwed. Learn from our misery. See the laws in next page: