That happened to me all the god damn time in Tokyo as well. My friends told me it was because I wasnt Asian. But, maybe I was just unlucky.

wait, in Japan you have to have registration for your bike? like registration for a car? what the hell?

yep

Yeah. So you get a little sticker to put on your frame. When they stop you they call in the number on the radio and if the name doesnt match who you said, then your night is over. To jail you go. Its guilty until proven innocent.
And yeah...they stop foreigners 100x more often.

that's kind of ridiculous

They stop any and everyone at any time riding a bike. It happens alot.
So, If the bike is stolen then the person riding it is ****ed and the owner gets the bike back.
Seems great to me and probably deters bike theft a great deal.
How is that ridiculous?

i guess that's good. But I dont know it just seems like a hassle getting stopped ALL the time and being asked to show your registration. And i wasn't thinking at first, i didn't realize the registration is just a sticker on your bike, i was thinking you'd have to have your registration papers, like a car's, on you all the time if you were riding a bike. That would be lame

Whats to stop someone from stealing a bike, removing the sticker and replacing it with their own registration sticker?

Magical spells and/or the Force.

A few things. The sticker's number must match the serial number on the bike and your name. Typically, people who steal bikes dont know the owner's name. The kind of bike is checkable as well.
Think of it like a car's license plate. You cant just steal a car and swap your plates onto it at all. Even if it were the same make and model of car.

That's like switching the plates on a car. The cops call it in and find out the kind of bike, and the serial number of the bike that goes to that sticker. And probably the owners ID too.

I guess youve never had an expensive bike stolen that wished you could somehow get back but never did.

Magical spells and/or the Force.

That has to be one of the best replies I've seen on a forum :-)

[QUOTE=2manybikes]You shined a light directly at a drivers face ? That's illegal. No wonder she stopped you.

QUOTE]

I was wondering if anybody else would think of that.

oh yeah try driving throught the south with california plates

Yawn. You guys live in constitutional candy land. Although the 4th admendment is alive and well the courts have streamlined it a bit.

Stop & Frisk Rule (Terry v. Ohio)-- a frisk or patdown of the outer clothing is NOT technically a search, but whenever police restrain a person’s freedom to walk away, a seizure has occurred. To frisk, police must have "reasonable suspicion" (not merely a can’t-put-into-words hunch) and the frisk must be for weapons only, unless under the plain feel exception. Furtive movements, inappropriate attire, carrying suspicious objects, vague answers to questions, refusal to identify oneself, and appearing to be out of place are all grounds for articulable suspicion. This has been extended to roadside stops, luggage, suspicion of narcotics possession (in many cases, also requiring a trained dog to establish probable cause). Often produces evidence other than weapons that come into "plain view", demonstrating the interrelationships among these precedents.

[QUOTE=Fixxxie]
slvoid has mentioned it in another thread. That's three of us so far ! :)

People seem to be amazed that you can get stopped for doing something illegal !! Most vehicle laws are on line now. Ignorance is no excuse. :rolleyes:

Wow whenever I hear about all this pseudo-law-what-to-do-if-a-cop-pulls-you-over stuff I have to laugh.
If I was a cop, and some teenager was like, NO YOU CAN'T SEARCH ME WAAAAAH! ILLEGAL! I would search the heck out of them. Because I'm a bumbumhole.

Who are people going to believe, Johnny Backpack or Mr. Law?



The best way to make things go smoothly is to be nice and polite, not pretend you're Alley McBeel.

Exactly,
as my gramma used to say "ya catch for flies with honey than vinegar"

we ride with a couple cops down here, I trained local police in bike maintenance and I work with inner city kids in this mostly black city. I know cops, I know my kids and I know the dynamic of confrontation around here.

Some cops are pricks, some people are pricks.
But there is a general hostility to police around the greener portions of the fixie fanclub and I wonder if it is not the product of a revolutionary aesthetic that honors confrontation with police.

I cannot help but notice that the same community that long ago commodified activism has now commodified the track bike. We keep seeing privileged white kids, black clad hippies really, recounting their stories of how the cops harrased or repressed them. I have seen some of these incidents go down and too often they are intentionally escalated by the black-shirt crew.

like I said some cops are pricks, but some cyclists are pricks too.

I work with inner city kids and I find that the friendlier the kids and I am with the local cops, the better we are able to deal with tensions that could lead to confrontation. What might look like collaboration to those who enjoy revolution, confrontation, violence, is to me simply peace studies and conflict resolution applied to the community we live in.

Thank you for the positive stories of police interaction, they help to balance out this thread.

Anyone have any suggestions for when the police ARE being difficult?

Any cops wanna jump in here?

Any minority riders who have gotten profiled wanna tell their story?

(I realize as I write this that I don't know if the story at the top of this thread was a case of profiling).

If you want to make things better, learn to get along with cops and stop voting for Nader.
While you were sleeping, the president you helped to elect has been selling your rights to the lowest bidder.

Is this just an extention of the same old suburban skate kid drama that can be witnessed in mall parking lots across america except the kids are little older, riding track bikes instead of decks and now they have read their howard zinn and see revolution in every ridiculous squabble?

i just had lunch with a cop. he's a nice guy.

/stealing ryand's idea

(hating photons)
our cop had tattoos and a track bike.
he didnt buy us lunch though, what a ****ing prick.

yeah but as soon as that k-9 unit rolled up, i was glad he was sitting at our table!
that goes for our "less than legal" activities from here out, I'm glad he's at our table

hey, i don't do anything illegal...

we're so persecuted