I believe it was in 2019 that I got called by the honest-to-goodness Canada Revenue Agency telling me I owed ~$3.6 million dollars in taxes from my last tax return year. The caller ID was nondescript so it could have been anything, and those robotized 'the RCMP has a warrant for unpaid taxes' scam calls were en vogue. It was so absurd that I laughed and said "Sure, hold on a minute, I'll buy those iTunes gift cards right away for you; you guys still take those, right?"
It wasn't until she started confirming my personal information like address, employer and previous employer, SIN number, previous return amounts, etc. that I went white as a sheet and could feel my butthole pucker as the government was poised to do something very nasty to it.
Thankfully a (panicked) phone call to Locke revealed that someone had woefully fat-fingered something at the Winnipeg Tax Centre to make it look like I'm making Steven Stamkos money, and a quick resubmission to correct the error brought my taxable income (and blood pressure) down to normal again.
JonDuke's wife was right to be skeptical, since so many bad actors will find ways of socially engineering whatever they need out of someone (PepsiFree aside, he hasn't been bamboozled since that first time in 1984 when his uncle pulled the "Got'cher nose!" trick) and I think the CPS officer could have acted a little more professionally to convince Mrs. JonDuke that they weren't acting nefariously. Even just changing the way the question was asked could have been more disarming.
Yeah. I have to answer the phone for business reasons and get at least a couple of calls a week from someone claiming to be a government agency or law enforcement. If the actual government wants people to take it seriously on the phone they need to figure that out.
Who even answers a call from an unknown or private number these days?
Also, who doesn't have reflex reaction to hit the brakes just a bit and more slowly pass a police car when you come up on them and then speed up when their out of sight?
Also, who doesn't have reflex reaction to hit the brakes just a bit and more slowly pass a police car when you come up on them and then speed up when their out of sight?
That's a struggler move. If you aren't speeding and didn't realize going the speed limit was going to trigger phone calls to your wife and a high speed ice chase then why would you slow down?
Also, if the cop could have thought a little faster, the safest and most prudent thing to do would have been to light JonDuke up right then and there. No phone calls and no speeding to catch a guy on crappy roads.
If the cop let him go by and then had to chase him down some minutes later, he probably should have just left well enough alone and decided to catch the next guy going too fast.
But seriously, I'm still just annoyed for JonDuke and his wife about the ridiculous 5:30 a.m. phone call and then an ice chase over basically nothing. And then just to give him a warning? That's so fkn dumb. So JonDuke was causing enough chaos out there to require a phone call and a chase, but his behaviour wasn't so egregious that he deserved a ticket? Then leave him alone hah. I've been ticketed for running a yellow light when the roads were icy. They'll ticket you if they can. I think this was too nebulous to even ticket...that seems pretty easy to fight IMO. Just a cop looking to flex on us a little.
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That's a struggler move. If you aren't speeding and didn't realize going the speed limit was going to trigger phone calls to your wife and a high speed ice chase then why would you slow down?
Yep, this is one of the more infuriating things strugglers do on the road. People around you are barely going the speed limit as it is, and suddenly a wild CPS unit appears, and bam, half of the cars drop their speed to 5-under. If you're doing the speed limit and driving reasonably, there is no reason to mimic the squad car doing 55 in a 60. He's probably distracted playing Minesweeper on his laptop, whatever, drive normally.
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Originally Posted by Azure
Typical dumb take.
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Also I'm annoyed at CPS just from reading this thread. I think that organization has a serious public relations issue... that they probably don't care about it but it must impact the ability of cops to properly do their job.
Yep, this is one of the more infuriating things strugglers do on the road. People around you are barely going the speed limit as it is, and suddenly a wild CPS unit appears, and bam, half of the cars drop their speed to 5-under. If you're doing the speed limit and driving reasonably, there is no reason to mimic the squad car doing 55 in a 60. He's probably distracted playing Minesweeper on his laptop, whatever, drive normally.
I have no problem passing cops going the speed limit although I wouldn't try it doing 100 on snowy Deerfoot when they're doing 70.
I did get pulled over after passing an RCMP on highway 1 going about 10 over. I had been stuck behind a guy in a lifted truck who was hogging the left lane. He did the struggler thing and pulled behind the cop. I called him a ##### under my breath, sped up and got lit up.
I didn't get a ticket but the cop was curious why I would pass him and told me I wouldn't do that to CPS. I said I would because city cops are usually a lot more chill about road infractions. I've seen people do really dumb stuff in front of CPS vehicles and not get pulled over because they must have had some more important to do. JonDuke found one who wasn't busy I guess.
Hot take but is there a police service in Canada who truly stands for the people? You hear of police being paid a killing to do overtime looking over manholes. Look at the sunshine list on these guys. Then you look at those who do power trippy things or those who are investigated for years while being suspended with pay until their let go and don’t have to pay any of it back. They’re a protected group in Canada. And the bootlickers who side for them at any cost are just as annoying.
More importantly, what kind of water bottle are they using? Are they issued one or do they bring one from home? I bet you can get a badass tactical tumbler from 911 Supply.
Edit: I was half right. They sell Yeti but they sell this too. Lol.
The risks / benefit to an individual in conversing with a cop is asymmetric to the risk side. Therefore regardless of whether I believe a caller on the phone is a cop or not I wouldn't converse with them. Your wife did the right thing.
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It is within the right of a police officer to give you a ticket for driving the speed limit when the weather or driving conditions is/are hazardous.
Slow down.
How is it within their rights? If the speed limit is 110 km/h who gets to decide the speed limit that is safe? And if they have decided this number how the hell do we know what this officers arbitrary number is? I'm not saying he couldn't give the ticket but it wouldn't be for speeding it would be some other BS ticket like reckless driving and in this situation it would get tossed.
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How is it within their rights? If the speed limit is 110 km/h who gets to decide the speed limit that is safe? And if they have decided this number how the hell do we know what this officers arbitrary number is? I'm not saying he couldn't give the ticket but it wouldn't be for speeding it would be some other BS ticket like reckless driving and in this situation it would get tossed.
I agree with you, and I would argue you'd have to show that the vehicle was unstable or at risk of losing control (sliding around in its lane, for example). There are people on the roads who are unsafe at nearly any speed in any condition, and there are people who actually know how to drive in this crap at a reasonable pace. Simply saying "going faster than me" shouldn't be a valid justification.
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Originally Posted by Azure
Typical dumb take.
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I actually considered filing a complaint and even printed off the foip form from the CPS website and wondered if I could get footage from the time I passed him, so it included the actual phone call to my wife then his interaction with his partner up to including when they pulled me over. Not to post it anywhere but to perhaps understand the logic of their choices. But in not sure if I would be given all of that footage anyway.
I also considered calling CPS and just seeing if I could get that officer to call me so I could explain that he caught my wife at a bad time and to justify her tone so he may consider that if and when he deals with someone else in a similar situation
But I'm probably not doing either.
For me the biggest thing here was the way he told my wife" fine if you want to do it that way" and then him telling me " I'm tempted to give you a ticket because of your wife". Maybe he was just having a really bad morning too but that whole thing doesn't sit well with me
I think your being upset with that is actually quite fair. I'd be pretty choked about that too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TorqueDog
I believe it was in 2019 that I got called by the honest-to-goodness Canada Revenue Agency telling me I owed ~$3.6 million dollars in taxes from my last tax return year. The caller ID was nondescript so it could have been anything, and those robotized 'the RCMP has a warrant for unpaid taxes' scam calls were en vogue. It was so absurd that I laughed and said "Sure, hold on a minute, I'll buy those iTunes gift cards right away for you; you guys still take those, right?"
It wasn't until she started confirming my personal information like address, employer and previous employer, SIN number, previous return amounts, etc. that I went white as a sheet and could feel my butthole pucker as the government was poised to do something very nasty to it.
Thankfully a (panicked) phone call to Locke revealed that someone had woefully fat-fingered something at the Winnipeg Tax Centre to make it look like I'm making Steven Stamkos money, and a quick resubmission to correct the error brought my taxable income (and blood pressure) down to normal again.
JonDuke's wife was right to be skeptical, since so many bad actors will find ways of socially engineering whatever they need out of someone (PepsiFree aside, he hasn't been bamboozled since that first time in 1984 when his uncle pulled the "Got'cher nose!" trick) and I think the CPS officer could have acted a little more professionally to convince Mrs. JonDuke that they weren't acting nefariously. Even just changing the way the question was asked could have been more disarming.
Ahahaha! I remember that! In fairness I cannot blame you for 'puckering up.'
That was huge mistake on their end, but its funny in retrospect.
"Let Stamkos pay the Stamkos taxes!!"
But the thing is...those issues dont tend to get resolved until I call them!
I genuinely think CRA's biggest disservice in the last 10 years was not putting a hard boot down on scams immediately.
Because now, nobody trusts anyone over the phone. Nobody.
I mean, look at Jon Duke's wife? Yeah, if I got a phone call from 'The Police' I'd tell them to shove it too.
I genuinely got a call from CRA a few months ago and it took ages to believe them.
"Hi I'm Officer Dickslot from CRA looking for Mr. Locke...my Officer ID# is 1561615..."
Yeah, blah, blah, blah. I can make up numbers too. I'm Officer Locke, Officer ID# 8008135.
What do you expect me to do with your Officer ID#? Look it up? Where? I don't believe you.
What are you going to tell me? That I owe Taxes? See here Sir Dickslot...I file those, I know what they are and I pay them and then I take PDFs for proof of payment and I put those in a handy little folder and then I back that folder up!
Same with JonDuke. If there was an issue...there are lights on their roof for that.
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What if you and your wife are separated or something along those lines? If the cop thought you were travelling too fast he should have pulled you over earlier - not potentially violate any privacy laws calling someone else. In the amount of time he was on the phone (probably while driving in unsafe conditions) he couldve just pulled you over and spoke with you personally instead of complaining he had to drive faster just to pull you over.
I was driving way to fast on a side road in the summer, and an RCMP was coming towards me - he just flashed his lights at me as he passed me - and I took that as a hint to slow the F down all the way home. He had other options.
It sounds pretty crummy but you didn't get a ticket and it's probably just best to let it go and move on. I'm not saying that your wife's recollection isn't correct but it's also possible the officer feels he was just doing his job and was being disrespected even though your wife was simply playing things cautiously. At the end of the day no harm done and maybe in the future you may even drive a little more cautiously in bad conditions as I used to do a lot of back and forth driving from Calgary to southern alberta back in the day and you can get into that zone where the conditions no longer bother you and you take your safety for granted.
At the end of the day, we can only hope officers can handle a little disrespect, especially when it's genuine confusion from someone not expecting to be demanded intimate details of their car's whereabouts at 5:30 in the morning.
Yes cps are human too, but you'd hope that they'd be good enough with people to recognize why they might not get a warm reception in that instance.
But maybe the account of the OP was making it out to be more of a power trip than it was.. hard to say.
But yeah I think this advice is worth taking in this instance. Just a warning? Be grateful and maybe it lends to more awareness in winter conditions.
As someone who has probably made probably hundreds of those phone calls, there’s a litany of reasons to phone the registered owner. Driver not matching the registered owner is a very common one. CPS would only have access to the main registered owner (which lists physical description). Maybe they were the subject of a complaint from the public and we’re following up. I’ve warned registered owners over the phone a lot when it’s not worth the effort to pull them over, it’s only going to be educational, etc.
File a complaint through Calgary Police Professional Standards if you feel the demeanour wasn’t professional. Phoning a registered owner of a vehicle wouldn’t really be anything out of the ordinary though.
JonDuke's wife was right to be skeptical, since so many bad actors will find ways of socially engineering whatever they need out of someone (PepsiFree aside, he hasn't been bamboozled since that first time in 1984 when his uncle pulled the "Got'cher nose!" trick) and I think the CPS officer could have acted a little more professionally to convince Mrs. JonDuke that they weren't acting nefariously. Even just changing the way the question was asked could have been more disarming.
Its interesting to me that CPS doesn't realize that many scam phone calls start from unknown numbers with "this is the CRA, this is the RCMP, your family member has been in an accident, your family member is in jail and requires you to bail them out" sort of openings. I hear about these all the time. She was completely right to be skeptical.
I've never heard of a police officer phoning the registered owner of a moving vehicle, I imagine most people wouldn't know that happens.
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Its interesting to me that CPS doesn't realize that many scam phone calls start from unknown numbers with "this is the CRA, this is the RCMP, your family member has been in an accident, your family member is in jail and requires you to bail them out" sort of openings. I hear about these all the time. She was completely right to be skeptical.
I've never heard of a police officer phoning the registered owner of a moving vehicle, I imagine most people wouldn't know that happens.
I've never heard of it. I'd hang up assuming it was BS nonsense.
Not. A. Chance.
But what...on the off-chance you're going to get in touch with the driver? Thats INSANE.
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If I see a number I don't recognize I let it go to voicemail. If it's important they'll leave a message. If so i'll call back. Does that make me not normal?
That is not in fact what makes you not normal. But that is normal.
the above was intended as a joke. You may be the most normal person on here.
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