If you’ve even thought for a moment of holding public office, New Jersey officials provided a key lesson last week in the dos and don’ts of traffic stops.
First the don’t. This lesson comes from Newark Councilwoman Dan Rone, who in December 2006, five months into her first term on the council, learned that her nephew had been pulled over by the Rutgers’ Newark campus police for failing to wear a seat belt. She pulled up to the scene, in her municipal car, pointed out her government license plates to the police, repeatedly identified herself as a Newark councilwoman, and demanded to know what was going on.
She blocked a lane of traffic for around seven minutes, and when she didn’t get satisfaction from the cops promised to call "the real police" – meaning the Newark Police Department – and promptly did, summoning more officers to the scene of a routine traffic stop.
"The scene unfolds in an almost excruciatingly slow fashion," a judge would later write.
"You don’t know who I am?" Rone asked at one point.
"She was relentless and obstreperous in her conduct," Essex County Superior Court Judge Patricia K. Costello would conclude.
Rone wound up getting herself arrested, and convicted, for obstruction of justice and fined. Tuesday Costello added the finishing touch, writing in a ruling posted online by The Star-Ledger that Rone had abused her office, potentially damaged the public trust and must forfeit her council seat, never to hold public office again.
That stands in sharp contrast to the actions of Attorney General Anne Milgram, the boss of the state police, who, pulled over Friday for doing 69 miles-per-hour in a 50 m.p.h. zone in her 1994 Honda Accord, accepted her ticket and put out a news release informing the public of the situation and acknowledging her mistake Monday.
"I made a mistake and I know what I did was wrong," Milgram said in the statement. "I take responsibility for driving too fast." she said in the statement.
My bad. Sorry about that. Fuss averted.
(One of Milgram’s predecessors, Attorney General Zulima Farber, lost her job after intervening in a traffic stop involving her boyfriend, also arriving in a state vehicle flashing her lights).
The enduring mystery, however, for anyone who has ever driven the area on Route 1 where Milgram was ticketed, is this: how in that maze of Central Jersey strip malls, fast food joints, traffic and stop lights, does a driver get moving faster than 50?
That’s a lesson I’d love to learn.
