Drivers beware, the rookies are there

My New Year started with a bothersome event. Officer Rabago, a CNMI traffic patrolman, issued me a speeding citation on Jan. 5, about 9:15am. I was traveling north on a clear day at the intersection of Quartermaster Road and Beach Road. Two rookies were concealed with a speed monitoring device in the bushes just past that intersection and one, Officer Rabago, waved me over to the side of the road. He was just completing the issuing a citation to another driver. I waited as he examined my driver’s license and registration. There is a place on the speeding citation to indicate the age of the driver. My license clearly indicates my birthday as July 22, 1939, but apparently that was too big a number for the officer’s arithmetic capabilities so he asked me how old I was and I replied, “65.” He wrote it down. Examining the Officer Rabago’s citation also revealed that my race was “U.S.” Funny, I’ve always thought of myself as a Caucasian. Officer Rabago appeared to be about 21 to 25 years old. I should have asked him HIS age, but I didn’t.

Today, Feb. 10, 2005 I went to my arraignment at the appointed time of 8:30am and could find no one in the courtrooms nor anyone to ask for assistance. Finally, I was able to determine that I could just pay a fine of $30 or go to court. I don’t like going to court, so I took the coward’s way out and paid the fine.

My scientific curiosity led me to an examination of the venue for the arraignments and I found that they were to be held in Judge Lizama’s courtroom. I also found a list of those who were to be arraigned in that courtroom. It was a big list. I assumed that this list was made up of primarily traffic offenders because each offenders’ name was preceded by “CNMI vs”. There were 383 offenders on that list. The list was revealing. Of this 383 people, 96 had recognizable Chamorro or Carolinian names. The remaining 287 names included other nationalities such as Ludwick, Buenviaje, Yoo, Kim, Ren, Wang, Enriquez, Li, Deliva, Kyung, Pagcu, Miyagi, Talavera, etc. These names are obviously not indigenous. These are names of persons who are: basically non-voting; politically of little importance; unrelated to the citing officer; and could contribute to the CNMI coffers. Something is wrong. Could this ticketing process be, as the lawyers say, arbitrary and capricious? Could our police offices be profiling non-indigenous residents and letting other offenders go with just a warning?

These questions brought to mind the New Year’s resolution by our chief legal officer, Attorney General Pamela Brown. It was printed in the “Beach Road” magazine of January 2005 and I quote her resolution, “To continue to make sure that the laws of the CNMI are enforced without consideration of people’s status—political, financial and family ties.” AG, you’ve got your work cut out for you. This arraignment list indicates that your wishes are not being implemented by the “rookies” in the law enforcement section of your agency. I use the term, “rookies” because it was the response I was given when I inquired as to who writes the most traffic citations. I was told, “The rookies”. From a public relations standpoint, maybe it is not in the best interests of the CNMI to put young, unwise police officers, rookies, in charge of issuing traffic citations unless they are accompanied by a wiser adult. The non-indigenous recipients of the citations, many non-English speakers, remember our actions, not our words and they also have relatives and friends.

Another aspect of this situation that disturbed me was the money. The minimum fine for exceeding the speed limit is $30. If all 383 of the people on the arraignment list pay the minimum fine and I’m sure some will pay more, the income to the CNMI general fund from today’s collections is a minimum of $11,490. This looks like selective taxation. I have an idea. Put more rookies on the street and decrease everybody’s income taxes. After all, it only takes about 15 minutes to write the citation and people exceeding the 35mph speed limit are in endless supply. Right? Do you occasionally exceed the speed limit on the way to work? No?

The rationale behind these findings is the result of 40 years of residency and driving on Saipan of which the majority of time was spent working with young people in the field of education. In my research some years ago I came upon this interesting fact. Did you know that the human brain does not develop the capability to practice wisdom until approximately age 28? For some of us it may take even longer. I hope for a pleasant non-bothersome retirement on Saipan. By the way did you also know that this week is the beginning of the Lunar New Year? Happy New Year!

Roger N. Ludwick
Saipan