Bureaucracies are stupid. They grow larger linearly; they grow stupider exponentially.
New tagline...
This happened in California?
From the article:
Miss Bellas was on her way home from work when she was stopped by police near her home in Penrith in January after officers noticed the knife in her car.
So, are we to understand that she perhaps had a knife visible, perhaps lying on one of the seats....perhaps she is taking it home because it's an expensive Chef's knife and she didn't want to leave it at work for fear of theft.
So then it's on a seat and she's perhaps stopped at an intersection, and a foot patrol officer peers into her vehicle, becomes alarmed at the sight of a knife and stops her car.
Or, perhaps the car was parked in a lot near the market where she works, and a policeman notices the knife inside or a nosy, hysterical passerby calls in a complaint. The car is watched, perhaps for several hours until she returns to it, whereupon she discovers her 'criminality'.
And then it becomes her obligation to prove that she has a legitimate reason to have it.
And because of the type of work that she does, getting ironclad employment verification is difficult, and so the case drags on for FOUR MONTHS.
It left the 29-year-old market trader being dragged through the legal system in a four-month ordeal
Just astonishing.