Dan's Papers - April 4, 2008

Last Saturday at 5 p.m., my fiancée and I, together with our dog Moo, got into my Tahoe and drove the two miles to downtown East Hampton to run some errands. First on our list was Gruen Optica on Main Street to pick up a new pair of glasses for me. Jessie had called. They were ready. Finishing there, and with the new glasses in hand, we walked out to the car, which was parked in a spot directly in front of Citarella less than a hundred yards away. It was a lucky thing for us to find such a space on a busy Saturday afternoon in that town.

From there, we intended to go to the North Main Street Dry Cleaners and pick up some clothes, then walk over to Crossways Music a few doors down to get some musical equipment we had ordered, then, after dropping off the dog, go to a restaurant for dinner. We had a reservation at seven.

None of that ever happened.

A police officer was standing by my car, looking at it. I knew the registration and inspection were up to date. I had both of them. What could the problem be? The officer, who I did not know, saw me coming and said something very odd as he walked out into the center of the street.

"Mr. Rattiner, I need you to wait for me here, please."

I noticed he was in full regalia, with his badge, gun and equipment strapped on him. As he walked away, I overheard him speak into a microphone that was pinned to his chest. It was in code. Alpha, romeo, tango was all I could get.

There were two other police cars parked out front in the street, blocking one of the lanes. Behind us in the Citarella lot there was a big SUPERVISOR police van with the motor running and an officer in it. I would soon learn there had been no terrorism, no break in, no traffic accident, no deaths or injuries. It was about the Tahoe.

We waited about five minutes until this officer came back. How could that officer have known my name? I wondered. It's not on the car anywhere.

Officer Jack Bartelemy, for that was the name on the gold tag on his chest, came back.

"You are lucky I caught you before you drove off," he said. "We're only going to impound your car. You won't be arrested."

Moo, our Wheaten Terrier, looked at the shiny, ramrod straight police officer through the passenger window.

I thought - is there a bomb in the car? I asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Oh yes," he said. "There was a lapse in your insurance. We now have these new radar sensors on the roofs of our police cars. And we can check the license plates of every car on the road just by driving by. When we went by yours, an alarm went off. Your registration was suspended. The insurance had lapsed. The plates have to be taken off and sent up to the Department of Motor Vehicles. And the car goes to the police impound."

"All my paperwork is right up to date. This is a mistake. I'll drive it home if you like and I won't drive it at all after that. Whatever it is, I'll get it straightened out first thing Monday."

"I can't let you do that," Bartelemy said. "The car stays here. It cannot be moved. Except by us."

"It'll get a ticket. It's in a one hour zone."

"You can't let me just drive it home?"

"No. We'll arrest you if you try."

"So we're just dumped out here on the street?"

This went on for about ten minutes, this back and forth. The officer was very clear about what he had to do. There would be no variation from it.

My fiancée Chris, meanwhile, asked if it would be okay for her to go into Citarella for a few minutes. She'd buy us something for dinner. We actually had no dinner at home, because we were planning to eat out. He said go ahead.

"What about my dog?" I asked. I was trying veiled sarcasm. A bad idea. "Are you going to impound him too?" The officer was not amused.

"We can call the taxicab company to come get you to take you home if you like," he said. "We'd offer to drive you, but all three cars are on calls." All three were right there, within the sound of his voice.

I looked at the van with the word SUPERVISOR on it still in the Citarella lot. And I walked over to it. There was an officer at the wheel by the name of Morgan. He looked up.

"Is this really happening?" I asked. Bartelemy was a few steps behind.

"You can get things out of your car now if you want. You can do it now."

I was persistent. "I don't understand. You say everything is legal now. So how is there an insurance lapse?"

"It's from something in the past. It could have been just one day. Have you changed insurance companies?"

I wanted to know when the insurance lapse took place. This had to be a mistake. We were still over at the SUPERVISOR van when something came in over the radio.

"It's December 17, 2006."

"There was a lapse on December 17, 2006? That's when I bought the car. There must have been a mix-up from when it got transferred from the dealer to me. That's all it is."

"All it takes is a day," Bartelemy said. "If there was a lapse for even one day, the registration is suspended. It comes in on the computer, and with our new computer scanner, we got it. Hard to believe nobody picked this up before."

I took the registration out of my wallet and showed it to them. It was good until November 30, 2008. There was nothing saying it was suspended and there had been no notice to me that it had been suspended. This was impossible.

Morgan, inside the SUPERVISOR van, was talking on the phone. A message coming in on the phone on Bartelemy's shoulder was inviting him back out to the police car in the middle of the street. He walked off, but not until he held out his hand, and in it I placed my car keys.

So that was it. Chris returned with a bag of groceries from Citarella, which she set on the grass by the side of the Tahoe. I told her how it had all turned out. Then we opened the car doors and I took out a portable car charger, some cash on the dashboard, my wristwatch in the change well, a folding chair and a blanket from the back - I have no idea why I did that - and my dog Moo, who looked at me. What fun place is next, he wanted to know.

It was getting colder and I was starting to shiver. We were people with shopping bags, a car charger, a folding chair, a blanket and a dog, standing on the curb next to a white Tahoe parked in front of Citarella. I reached for my cell phone. Time to call a taxi.

At that moment, the wrecker with flashing lights appeared to haul off my car. It was Jigger from Balcun's Gas Station on North Main Street a block away. We know each other. We waved. He seemed a happy camper in all this.

As his cable lifted up the front end of my car, Officer Bartelemy wandered over to tell me what I'd have to do on Monday. Go to Riverhead Department of Motor Vehicles. Pay the $8 a day for the time it was uninsured. Get your plates back. Go to the impound and bail out the car for $150. And that was it. "You'll be done before the end of the day," the officer said.

"Could we have the car towed just to the house?" I asked.

"Can I tell Jigger?"

"Oh no. It has to go to the impound lot first. So you'd have to pay to have it towed twice," he said cheerfully. "Once to the impound, and then to the house."

"How long have you been doing this?" I asked.

"Being a police officer?"

"Just 20 minutes. We've already got two cars. Yours and another one, right there."

"I wrote about these new roof computer devices. You got them three weeks ago. I said they would be a disaster for this Village. No more just giving you a warning, take the car home and take care of it."

"At the rate you're going, you'll have the traffic problem in downtown East Hampton solved in no time." I thought that tone was about right.

My hands were cold. I was wearing a thin jacket. But at that moment, friends we know, Fred and Robin Seigel, drove out of the Citarella parking lot, pulled up to see what was happening and then offered to drive us home.

"If you'll take us, you've got to come in for a glass of wine," I said. "I've got the new Rose from Wölffer Estate."

"Our daughter just came back from China," Robin said. "So she's home and we want to be with her."

"Just for a few minutes," Fred said.

As Fred pulled out into traffic, he almost hit a car swerving over from another lane. Traffic here in the center of downtown was just one lane now because of what was going on.

At the house we had wine, crackers and cheese and watched the sunset overlooking Three Mile Harbor. Fred said this had been a cured lapse. He couldn't understand why, if it was not a current lapse, they could do what they did.

I said I had no notification of any lapse. Nothing. I had no idea there had even been a lapse.

"If it's two days, it will be $16. If it's two hundred days it will be $1600," I said. "I guess I will find out when I call."

We also talked about the time, three years ago, when the Village contracted with a company to put metal boots on the tires of cars that overstayed their time in Village parking lots. An attendant would wait nearby, sitting in a car with the key. He'd see a person hauling shopping bags and maybe a kid in a stroller back to his booted car and say he'd use the key to unlock it but not until the fine of $375 in cash was paid.

People would get very angry. Andrew Baker, who owns the Harbor Music Store in Sag Harbor, broke his big toe trying to kick the metal boot off his wheel in front of this attendant. George Plimpton, the late author, DID kick and break the boot with one solid shot. It broke into two pieces, and then fell to the ground with a clang, stopping both the attendant and George to gape at them in wonder.

Just keep the car, George told the attendant. And he walked off. It was, he later told me, a very old car not worth $375.

We used phrases like radar sting, legalized bullying and highway robbery as we talked about all of this.

"This is a terrible thing for this town," I said. "I'm going to call the Mayor."

And I did. I called him at his home right then and there. It was 6:30 p.m., the dinner hour, on a Saturday. He answered the phone. And after my long explanation he said he would look into this and get back to me by phone on Monday. I told him I'd save space in the paper for whatever it was he wanted to say at that time. Besides that, I thought this was simply an awful way to treat people in East Hampton.

"You should junk these computer radar devices," I told him. "Throw them in the trash. They are Orwellian devices that we should not be allowed to possess."

He said they have brought a lot of money to the village in a very short amount of time, catching scofflaws and people who had arrest warrants against them.

"But I do understand," he continued. "And I really appreciate that you called."

And so, a small dinner at home. And off to bed, but not before checking Moo's collar. Rabies good. Dog license good. Good dog.

It's Tuesday afternoon and the Tahoe is still at the impound yard on Accabonac Highway in East Hampton. I want to say that I owe an apology to the police officers because from their perspective what they saw would correctly lead them to impound the Tahoe. How it was done and how it was explained, however, is another matter. The police are busy people. This was very complicated.

And up to this minute, we are not able to determine how this vehicle had its registration suspended in 2006. My insurance company told me that Albany makes mistakes all the time. And they are usually fixed before it comes to this. It's still not clear how I never received any notice of suspension. I read my mail. I never got anything.

In any case, a lapse of insurance subsequently repaired, as perceived by Albany, triggered the suspension of the registration.

It will cost me $150 in cash to get it out of impound when the time comes. It will cost $15 a day for storage while it's there and it will cost $8 a day for the time that either the insurance was lapsed or the time that the registration was suspended until it gets reinstated, which would be a very, very large sum, if it was about registration.

So lucky me, I either get driven around or I borrow a delivery van from the office. What a wonderful time!

Incidentally, I have been such a good driver that only a license plate gun in the hands of the East Hampton Police Department one and a half years later has cleared the community of such scourges as my Tahoe.

That part of my complaint still stands. I think there are certain things that should be not known about very easily. We don't have a federal human being computer monitoring system. As this case unfolds it could very well be that we shouldn't have a license plate reader instant seizure computer system. At least until we are prepared to allow some sort of purgatory where things rest until certain things get sorted out.