drkangel348

Was at a traffic light and my TSX got hit behind by some old Mazda with a bunch of girls in it. I pulled over got out of my car, came up to them and asked for insurance and a drivers license to exchange information and they ran.

I jumped back in my TSX and I tried to chase them down but eventually got into a bad neighborhood, then I noticed that they stopped in front of a group of people after one of the back passengers was using a green lited cellphone, the people were threatening me with comments like "i have a gun" "ill fu** you up" and thats when I decided it wasn't worth it and got out of there.

Called the police, I had their license plate number, and they came...

Told them what happened and where it happened, and where I last saw them... The police officers asked me to take them to that place I last saw them, since they also got another call from another person about a hit and run involving a shooting in the same neighborhood...

So i lead them and guess what? The car that hit me came by and tried to run again, the cops pulled them over when I started shouting "its them, its them!" pulled them over and pointed their guns at them to get out of the car.

Appears that these were minors and the cops (LAPD) didn't take anything I said that seriously.

The minors said another car hit them from the back and caused them to hit me.
I don't know what happened I just knew that I got hit, but why would they run if that was true?

One of the cops said its probably because they were scared, omg... screw that.

ISN'T A HIT AND RUN A FELONY NO MATTER WHAT?

I even asked the cop to see if they had insurance and they completely ignored me making passive comments...

I swear just because it was 5 of them and 1 of me, they completely ignored me.
THE LAPD is bullshit, I swear, THEY GOT LET GO, I got no information since the cops said "it wasn't their fault" and also told me "it wasn't worth chasing them, and to call my insurance".

I feel so violated and all I am left with is a license plate number.
Calling my insurance tommorow to see what I can do.

Tonight was not a good night at all...
I'll post pics of the damage tommorow.

Chris_F

i would be so bloody angry if that ever happened to me, hope the insurance goes well

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

Well, with a license plate number, you could do a lot.

Call your insurance company and perhaps call a lawyer. I'm sure LAPD would cooperate if you put a little heat under them.

Whiskers

Call a lawyer.

biker

As long as the owner of the car that hit you had insurance, you should be able to collect (reagrdless of who was driving the car)

McGriddle

Sorry to hear about this crap... The cop's opinion isn't going to fly with your insurance. I'm sure your insurance company isn't going to be happy with paying everything themselves and will do what they can to get money out of them.

Talk to your insurance... they'll probably have a lawyer assigned to your case for you.

Good luck!

iamhomin

That's crap.

Hit and run is always a felony, no matter how it's done. Hope you get everything taken care of and keep us posted.

BluesMama

Sorry to hear that. Definitely call your insurance company. Baltimore, MD cops aren't much better. I had an old man make a right on a red light as I was approaching an intersection at 40 MPH. I smacked right into his left side. My airbags were deployed and there was major damage on both of our cars. The old man refused to give me his insurance information at first. A few ladies waiting for the bus on the corner taunted him for not cooperating (kinda funny) and called the cops for me (I didn't have a cell phone at the time). Cops come over and make me drive home with my airbags deployed with major front end damage. Wouldn't take my information or file a report or anything!!! I was pissed. So was the insurance company. They fought hard and made everything right. Good luck!

pby

First of all, I hope you weren't injured.

Second, I hope they fix your car...good as new.

Most importantly, I do hope you get fully compensated and have their evil fat asses thrown in jail.

Good luck.

TSX 'R' US

Wow...that sucks
Definatley call your insurance company and hopefully they'll be able to set things right for you. Good luck!!

slo007

I'd have said, "I want to make a private citizen's arrest for hit and run". The cop would then be obligated to arrest the driver of the car and file a report.

Good thing you got the license plate number.

fatcat

Your insurance company should fight for you; it's their job. Go to your local police station and demand to have a police report written for this. Then send the report to your insurance company and have them file a claim against the other person (since you have a license plate #, they can get her insurance info) for you. Without a favorable police report, the best you can probably do is 50/50 negligence. If all else fails, call a lawyer if you think you can sue for the legal expenses as well.

Sorry about what happened. The old saying holds true - everybody in Cali has a car but nobody f-cking knows how to drive.

Sumit831

Since you have the licence plate number, have your insurance company contact theirs. California law, if you are hit from behind, its 100% fault of the person behind you. If they claim that they were rear ended and ran into you, well California law also says that you are to maintain control of your vehicle at all times. So in any case they are at 100% fault.

As far as the hit and run, I would let that go. No use pressing charges for that since these are minors. Best thing to do is have your insuranse take care of your repairs (hopefully you have a good insurance company).

I know how lame the LAPD is, ive had some issues with them myselves. But I do agree that you demand a police report if you havent gotten one already.

Good Luck.

vitocorleone

Did you get the officer(s) badge number(s)? When you go to the police station, make sure they look this up for you (I'm assuming there'd be a log of this stop the police made) if you don't already have it. Do explain everything that happened to your insurance company as well, and the more pieces of info you can give them the better. Good luck.

kenji4861

I hate the LAPD..

My car was broken into in LA.. and they told me to come to the station since they can't go out to investigate each case.

I come and after doing a quick look, they said they can't get any finger prints. Told me to move my car because another car is coming in.

The guy laughed when I asked how often this happens. They don't take it seriously at all.

siccbruin

You can also look into talking to your Los Angeles city councilmember in your district (if you live in City of L.A), or the council member for the area you got hit. Visit the City of LA website to type in the address/location etc...
Call the member's office and speak to their caseworker, and explain your situation. They can make calls for you. Elected officials control the LAPD's budget Depending on who the member is, their field people are pretty responsive, as long as you follow up on it. Better yet, go directly to your state assemblymember...and have THEM make the referral to the respective LA City Councilmember. They will note your issue, and then personally say...I'm sending 'so and so' over for 'this and that' since it concerns city of L.A. i
It takes a different meaning when you have somebody from an Assembly office calling an LA City Council office. It also makes them look very bad, if they don't take care of it.

The LAPD is a dick entity and I know this from trying to work them on local issues. You just gotta put the pressure on them, and this one way you can do it. One thing I learned, f--- working lower ranks, go straight to their superiors...an elected official's office will do this. After all, it is your tax money.

drkangel348

Well I'm just going to let it go, I gave my insurance agency everything including the license plate and they said they would handle it.

The cops really treated me unfair, I was embarassed and felt very violated.
If I had the time and money I would get a lawyer.

As for the badge number, I didn't get one... I couldn't really think at that moment, sigh.
Plus being in a bad neighborhood with cops like this didn't make me feel safe at all.

Heres a picture of the damage, doesn't look that bad, I think the person who hit me, hit me at 15mph:


It doesn't look that bad, but since I take care of my car extremely well, it hurts me to see her (tsx) in that kinda shape.

mickey513

MOST Lawyers (at least in CA) these days don't accept payment unless you win your case and get paid. Having a lawyer in your case is much better than not having one.

drkangel348

Sorry to hear that . Yeah this isn't the first time I've been dealt badly with the LAPD...
There are some good cops but there seems to be alot of lazy or bad ones who just don't care.

I really appreciate everyones insight and response on this matter, this being my first accident (I've owned 2 cars before the TSX) I kinda got upset. It made me feel better after sharing what happened.


I am going to the body shop tommorow to get it appraised.

VeniceBeachTSX

No offense, but I can't think of a major city in the country where the police have the resources to provide much investigation for minor thefts and vehicular accidents, especially if there's no evidence and just a he-said, she-said type sitution. For better or worse, you say they hit you. They say they didn't. Possibly somebody could order lab tests to try to prove that some of your paint was on their bumper or vice versa, but nobody's going to spend the thousands of dollars on forensic investigation to prove a case involving a few hundreds of dollars of damage, where the only eye-witness is the person who was harmed. That's just the reality of the law and of the costs involved.

You won't get treated much different in Seattle or Portland or Salt Lake or any of the other places I've lived. Very rare that anybody will every be arrested based on a single person's complaint without additional evidence. Almost unheard of for anybody to be arrested for a car break-in without lots of really clear evidence.

Sad, but that's the fact, and not just in LA.

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

Although you're right, the problem is that in this situation, the cop showed up and didn't even take a police report (which he's obligated to do if someone requests) and he didn't insist on insurance information from both parties (which he should have insisted on in the police report) so the officer was irresponsible.

He didn't need to investigate the situation, but he should have at least taken the 5 minutes to do the report. I mean...what else was he going to do? Go to krispy kreme for a donut?

VeniceBeachTSX

He probably should have taken down a complaint because of the "hit and run," aspect but that's about it.

In California, accidents with less than $750 damage are not even reportable. Police guidelines vary around the state, but generally they won't do any sort of investigation or issue any sort of report unless there is an injury or death involved. I think LAPD "may" issue a report for accidents which appear to have greater than $3000 damage.

He had insufficient grounds for more than an informal questioning of the suspects. When they denied it, and there was no evidence beyond one guys complaint, there was really nothing more they could. They can't go around demanding information from people based on one guy's allegation.

tsxhondatuner

cops are worthless IMO, seriosuly its bull shit these days.

blackjackman

most big city cops are chicken-shit mental feckups.

This shiet sounds like discrimination : drkangel348, what is your racial bkground ? and those who hit and ya and threatened you ?

tyipengr

Seriously though. What is the racial background of you, the girls that hit you, and the cops. If this is what I think it is, this shit happens ALL the freakin time. I would f'n sue and I am not even the suing type.

Honeslty though, not all cops are bad. But I have been lucky enough to only have to closely deal with cops that happened to be the same ethnic background as myself and within 3-5 years of my age. OTHER cops tend to only like to threaten me with jail time/tickets/towing if I don't move my automobile...I don't have to be in violation of anything, I just need to move my car for some reason or another (like my car is somehow directly in the path of them and a hotdog stand.) FAT, OLD COPS = BAD NEWS. Not being mean, just my personal observation.

drkangel348

I don't think it was a racial issue at all... I think the cops were just jealous assholes, that didn't really care at all...

The cops kept looking in my car and making comments:
"oh wow youre car is so clean"
"look he has navigation oh wow"
"come on look at your car its so nice look at the cars we have to drive around in all day"
"it looks easy to fix"
"I think all of you guys took your bruises tonight and you guys should just go home"

In my mind I was getting angrier by the second, while at the same time thinking WTF?
Everytime I kept explaining what happened it just ended the same way over and over again... I kept asking them to check to see if they had insurance but they kept saying "she says she was hit too, even if you get her insurance it was the 3rd cars fault" I just said f**k it, and went home because it was 2 AM... the accident happened at midnight. Its like right after they questioned those girls, whatever I said didn't mean shit.

BTW:
I'm Romanian.
The cops were Caucasian.
The girls were African-American.

I got an estimate of the damages today, its going to cost 480$!!!!
I don't think I can't get my insurance to cover it since I have a 500$ deductible, sigh!

blackjackman

Exactly. the damage is sooo minor - at least to the cops - that they make so light of it.
They see accidents ALL DAY and by looking at your damage they knew right there it's gonna be BELOW the deductible and so insurance or no insurance really don't mean crap there.
Basically the cops must be bored to hell and treated this as kiddie peanuts.

Now if you got an accent and young , and it's 2 AM and it's you vs. the homies. I'd say you can forget about any "justice".
Now you didn't go into how exactly the homies treatened you. If you had told the cops something like "that dude reached under his shirt in the back like he was going to pull out something...."
You would have gotten and see them getting searched and

ClutchPerformer

So a bystander gets to go to jail because you're mad? Great.

blackjackman

what bystander ? what jail ?
If "bystander" has weapon or contrabband on him, he has it coming, no ?

In original post he said they were threatening him.
I was saying he could have told the cops and depending what he said , just maybe the cops will do something about the threatening.

slo007

Nice to see someone actually read the post, not just the thread title.

drkangel348: Make sure the bodyshop checks for damage behind the bumper. That estimate could climb much higher if you were indeed hit at 15mph. I hit a wall while going in reverse at 5mph and the cost was over $2K.

VeniceBeachTSX

He also admits that he chased after them, apparently for some distance.

This is the kind of situation cops hate to get involved in, because there's no win possible.

Driver 1 says he was hit, but has only a few minor scratches to show for it.

Driver 2 says it was somebody else's fault

Driver 1 chases them down for some distance (prima facie aggressive behavior), then claims he was threatened when he caught up.

Driver 2 and friends claim they were just trying to scare off a nutcase who'se been chasing them down for miles.

It's just like a bar fight. The police aren't ever going to get to the bottom of who looked the wrong way at who first. They know it. So they tell everybody to leave and cool off at home, and if that doesn't work they let everybody cool off in jail.

You may know you're right, and that doesn't matter a bit to the police, since there's no way to prove anything and the base issue ($480 of scratches) doesn't even qualify as a reportable incident in California.

Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes its nice to know that the police can't legally just search you because some anonymous dude says they should.

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

Right, but the hit and run portion should have registered something. Regardless of what happened after, the fact that they ran and didn't stay to trade information should have been an indicator to the officer to at least ask some questions. The fact that the cop didn't even bother to make an inquiry seems kinda odd to me.

miner

Not sure how it is in CA but in TX if you hit someone from th rear you are liable no matter if someone hit you which caused you to him them. I would let insurance handle and then repor the officers for not doing their duty. A hit-and-run is against the law.

DEVO

Sorry. that's not a 15mph hit. More like 5mph... if that.

VeniceBeachTSX

Technically correct.

But again, we're talking about a relatively minor infraction. It's not a felony as others here have claimed. http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d07/vc16025.htm And even that is only if you can prove that they did hit and run, which will be virtually impossible.

And the net result had they spent the hours to investigate would have been zero. They know it. So like the bar fight, they just tell everybody to go home and cool off. If they didn't, they'd spend 100% of their time investigating scratches on bumpers, damage to people's flowerbeds and all sorts of other little stuff. It would be nice if they could, but that's not reality and never has been

Which is why LAPD -- and most police in California -- won't even get involved unless there's injury, significant property damage (besides the vehicles) or major traffic impact.

Been there before. Only help you'll get is from the insurance company, and even then only if it's enough damage to make it worth their while.