phragle

iTrader: (3)

House Bill 29 ohio basically forbids local and state law enforcement from doing "saftey inspection"; stops and boardings requiring probable cause to pull a boat over. note this does not appply to the coasties / feds

Stuckonstupid

This past summer I took my wife and uncle who was visiting from out of town out for an impromptu Friday night cruise, we were going to have dinner at gang plank marina in Washington DC. I launch directly across the Potomac river from there and against better judgment I decided to enjoy my first beer of the day while on the 5 minute ride over. We come into Washington Channel a bit hot and enter the no wake zone like normal and I notice my temp gauge isn't working, or didn't seem to be so I open the hatch while idling in to check the temp gauges I have on the motors while my Uncle who is from New York and has a boat of his own, steers. Well no sooner as I check the gauges and bang my head on the hatch cover at the reflection of blue flashing lights reflecting off the mirror on the underside of the hatch, captain DC water patrol douche is in full effect almost tied up to my boat. His first question was who's been drinking, my 75% full beer that I had opened 5 min earlier is in the cup holder by me, and I said I had. He then directs to my uncle asking for his boaters safety card which he doesn't have, then asks my wife if she has one (she does but will NOT drive the boat for some reason) and she says yes, but why? Captain asshat says that Washington DC has a 0 tolerance alcohol law and since I admitted to drinking and boating he can take me to jail for BWI, write my uncle a ticket for operating a boat without an approved boaters safety card, and that unless we wanted to pay to have the police tow the boat, she would have to drive it back to the trailer. I really thought we were on one of those joke tv shows, and asked him if he was really going to take me to jail for drinking 4 sips of beer and driving my boat and he said he can if I fail a sobriety check, so I said lets go. First test is the ol' pen in the hand trick, on a boat, in a busy channel and he wasn't satisfied with my results, so I said just let me blow and blew a 0.02 which I later found out is the lowest level a breathalyzer will detect. After 30 minutes of dealing with this, he wants to do a vessel safety check which I am fine with and showed him my USCG safety sticker that was just put on my boat the weekend prior, but he wants to drag this out for some reason, so life preservers, throwable, fire extinguisher, etc...... this all started at 5:45 and its now 7:30 and I ask how much longer this will take as we are hungry, sitting right in front of the restaurant we were going to eat at and he asks to see lights, turn everything on fine, then he asks for the stern light which is in the cabin, so my wife gets it, plugs it in and it wont turn on........................ it worked the previous weekend, captain douche is licking his chops, so I go fiddle with the light and my wife didn't push it down far enough, BOOM, let there be light I said. Now its 8 o'clock, he prints out my safety check and let me know, I said thanks for ruining our night to which he said he was just doing his job, to which I replied bull**** as I started the second motor and got the eff out of there. I have nothing but respect for law enforcement officers who do just that, those who waste others time for whatever reason they see fit serve no purpose to me. Sorry for the long rant.

j21black

Got any links to news articles on this? I have seen a few things flying around about it...Would like to read up....When did it happen?

abmotorman

Damn. It's almost always DNR or Coasties that stop me. On the said night, the first stop was by Milw PD that said I had expired fire extinguishers and could right a ticket if they wanted. The coasties (second stop for the night) said their is no expiration date on fire extinguishers as long as they are pressurized and since I have Halon it doesn't matter. Good thing these nuisance jacks are on the same page.

Too Stroked

I've had nothing but good experiences up here in New York State - mostly on Lake Ontario and the nearby Finger Lakes. I think a big reason for this "luck" is the fact that I get a USCG Courtesy Marine Exam done on both of my boats every spring. (My neighbor is a Coastie.) Once you pass, you get a colored sticker to affix to your windshield. Does it work? I can tell you that I've watched numerous USCG and local Sheriff's department boats scan me with binoculars and you can see them stop and look away when they get to the sticker. Of course it helps if you're not doing beers through a funnel when they look at you too.

I did get pulled over once about 10 years ago by a USCG 44 in the Genesee River near my house - even with the sticker. To add insult to injury, the Coasties had a local TV crew onboard filming the whole thing. When they got through with a very polite boarding, I asked them why they pulled me over. "Because we knew you'd pass with flying colors" was the response. I'll take that thank you.

I think there are good and bad water cops on any body of water. And since the Water Patrol is at best a part time / seasonal job up here, maybe you're more likely to get a "super cop wannbe" than other places.

598

I had a DNR tell me the same thing, he was going to write me a ticket. Until I proved him wrong. Thank God for smart phones. I tell everybody to get more educated on their rights .

phragle

iTrader: (3)

Remember, if boating near Ferguson... Drives up! Dont board!!

f_inscreenname

I bet there is some truth to that. During one of my encounters this year I learned that one of the pair of water cops was just transfered from Florida when trying to give him a location of something. He was also the nicest of any of the officers from the last few years.
I wonder compaired to boats how would it equal to cars. Myself for the 12 trips I may have made I was stopped 3 times this year. If that happened in the truck I would have been stopped about 70 times YTD. Now who would put up with that BS?.

MILD THUNDER

iTrader: (3)

One of the main reasons I stopped going to South Haven, Michigan. Summer of 2011 we went there often. All summer, they had a sheriff boat just putting up and down the river for an 8 hour shift, stopping boats, for no reason. I got stopped by the same guy, twice in one weekend! The second time we went back to the slip, and he followed us in, wanting to check all my stuff out. Somehow we got to talking about cars, and the officer seemed pretty cool. After he did his checks, we were small talking at the dock. I said in a polite way, something along these lines,

"I know you guys are just doing your job, but, you guys gotta think about something. We come here to this town every summer, bringing a group of 15-20 people for the weekend. I myself, have been here 24 hours, and dropped over 1000 dollars, between gas, food, marina fees, and what not. Its a great town, but I'm not gonna come back to a place where I'm constantly getting stopped by the police. This is my vacation time".

Racine wisconsin Sheriff got me for a noise ticket idling out of the marina. In Loto last summer, a water patrol cop was hiding behind the docks 1 row over from my condo slip. Literally hiding, like we didnt see him. He saw us boarding the boat, waited several minutes until I got settled and fired the engines up. As soon as I was free from the slip, he pulled me over.

If I was the water police, the boats I'd be targeting for checks are the ones loaded with 9 dudes, music blasting, and driving like fuktards, or the cruisers with DJ speakers and 37 people aboard spilling booze all over each other. I WOULD not be harrassing the boats with a "couple" on board, or two "couples", unless they were clearly doing something wrong.

The ENTIRE reason I fell in love with offshore boating, was it was the one place, you really had no rules so to speak. Out on lake Michigan, you had a huge body of open water, to go run the crap out of your toy, with no speed traps, no cops hiding in bushes. You could go out in the middle of the lake, blast the music, wave your prik around, bang the old lady, etc. It was a great vacation from life on land. It's no longer that way anymore.

314joey

iTrader: (1)

There's over 1000s posts and tons of news articles about it, it's sad, read all about it.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/gover...le3373299.html

http://midwestboatparty.com/forum/sh...e-in-transport