Open container laws
Last week, following the news story of M. Reza Salami's protest of the "Jesus is your savior" sign in a patrol car, we editorialized against allowing law enforcment officers to carry religious items in patrol cars. This week, we are looking into writing an editorial on another aspect of Salami's recent encounter: the open container law.
In an op-ed that ran in today's paper, Mr. Salami said that he was ticketed for breaking the state's open container law because he was carrying empty wine bottles slated for recycling.
Perhaps we should have known better, but some of us didn't realize until Salami's incident that carrying recyclables in the passenger compartment could lead to being ticketed.
Is this fair? If not, should the open container law be revised?
Have you ever gotten ticketed? We'd like to hear from you.
Comments (8)
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In the news article your reporter stated that Mr. Salami "was ticketed for having an open container of alcohol in his car"
To me, that is a different thing from having an empty containers which once contained alcohol.
Which was it? I would think there would be an important legal distinction.
Fortunately, we Greensboro residents have a recyclable container to put our empties into.
Posted on December 12, 2007 2:03 PM
Mr. Salami stated in his op-ed that they were empty bottles. He is coming to the newspaper soon to talk to members of the editorial department. I can check that statement with him. Does anyone else have questions for him or for us?
Posted on December 12, 2007 2:23 PM
How many bottles are we talking about??
Posted on December 12, 2007 2:34 PM
The op-ed says four or five.
Posted on December 12, 2007 2:47 PM
How rediculous. Had he just emptied one of the bottles? Why would a police officer waste time? I can't believe with all that is going on in the world that this would be an issue.
Posted on December 12, 2007 3:12 PM
I just got off the phone with Mr. Salami.
He says the incident happened 4 p.m. Nov. 24. He was on his way to donate items, including a big clock, to the Habitat for Humanity store on High Point Road. He put three to five empty, washed-out wine bottles in his car to take to the center because he knew it had a bin where he could discard them. He says that he had missed recycling that week and wanted to get rid of the bottles.
He said he was questioned at the sobriety checkpoint because he had had a glass of wine at his house about three hours before and the officer had smelled the wine on him. He passed the breath test. However, he received a ticket and was fined for having the bottles.
Someone gave me a decorated jug that probably had held some type of alcohol as a present a few years ago. I remember I carted that off to the Goodwill store and likely had it in the passenger part of the car when taking it there. Does that mean I broke the open container law?
Posted on December 12, 2007 4:12 PM
It's foolish. What should be punished is drunk driving, not behavior presumed to be linked to it. Heck, I can't see anything wrong with drinking a beer while driving--if it's your first and last. And I sure can't see what's wrong with your passenger drinking a beer.
Posted on December 14, 2007 12:31 PM
The law was established to help prevent driving while drinking.The last time I checked my car had a trunk. Was this a over kill, I have no idea. The whole story here is the Jesus sign. Seems like a waste of time and space.
Posted on December 15, 2007 3:25 PM