State troopers seem to get a lot of things wrong. From performing the PIT maneuver on the wrong car during a chase, to causing unnecessary deaths during said chases, to issuing fake tickets to cover up racism, major screw ups are commonplace at departments across the country. They can even mishandle what would otherwise be minor situations, like giving a ticket to someone over a small bump in a car wash.
Colorado’s NBC 9 News reports that 78-year old Arlene Branham received a ticket after her car hit the back of a state trooper patrol car while both were going through an automatic car wash. On July 26, Branham took her Honda HR-V to an automatic car wash. She explained to NBC 9’s consumer investigator Steve Staeger that it was her first time using one of these automatic washes, as her late husband was usually the one who took their cars to be washed.
Because of that, she was unaware that you had put the car into neutral when entering the wash. Branham says she also missed the sign telling her to do put the car in neutral. That lead to her hitting the car in front of her, which was a Dodge Durango patrol vehicle for the Colorado State Patrol.
“When you’ve not done anything like that, you’re just kind of apprehensive,” she said. “All of a sudden, just a short distance in, the car stopped. Well, it stopped because I hit the guy in front of me.” Surveillance video shows the moment Branham’s car hits – mostly bumps into – the car in front of her in the wash. Turns out, the vehicle belonged to a Colorado state trooper. Nobody got hurt.”
Body camera footage from the trooper she hit shows them assessing the damage after they came out of the car wash. NBC 9 says that while the incident happened in Arvada, Colorado, the Arvada police department never came. Instead, Colorado State Patrol sent more troopers to the scene to investigate what happened. Ultimately, Branham was hit with a $169 ticket for careless driving, something that cost her a few points on her license.
NBC 9 spoke with Colorado State Patrol Sergeant Patrick Rice about the incident. He was asked if it was normal for a trooper to give out a ticket for something that happened on private property, and was it even necessary to ticket Branham given how small the incident was. Rice said it’s up to the officers discretion:
“I mean, there’s always discretion. No matter what, the officer always has discretion, but the standard policy or procedure for the State Patrol and for troopers is if it’s a crash, and we can prove that there was a law violation, then we’re going to write that ticket.”
Rice also said that in incidents of traffic collisions that discretion is pulled back “because now there’s money involved and there’s people that need [to be] compensated.” Basically, the trooper didn’t have to give her a ticket, but for whatever reason felt he needed to do so.
Meanwhile, Branham says she doesn’t think she deserved the ticket considering the situation, as there were no injuries and barely any visible damage. “I just felt like it wasn’t right that they gave me the ticket. I mean, there was no damage,” she said. “I had a tiny, tiny little place where it took the paint off my car, and I could not really see any damage to his car. Nobody was hurt. I mean, we weren’t even probably going a half a mile an hour, and so I just thought it was just wrong.”