“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because consent isn’t required for booking after an arrest.”
Diane laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
The officer continued typing.
“You’re all trained to say the same thing.”
“Yes.”
The answer surprised her.
Diane stared at him.
He looked up.
“We are literally trained.”
She looked away.
Several minutes later, Nathan entered with paperwork.
Diane immediately straightened.
“You.”
Nathan stopped.
“Me.”
“You think this is funny?”
“No.”
“You called me a toddler.”
“I did not.”
“One of you did.”
“Not me.”
Diane frowned.
She had absorbed so many arguments from videos online that she could no longer remember which lines had happened tonight and which belonged to clips she had watched before.
Nathan placed documents on the desk.
“Your citations.”
Diane looked at them.
Failure to display front registration.
Improper turn.
Failure to signal.
Crossing center line.
Then criminal charges.
Obstruction.
Resisting without violence.
She looked up.
“You’re seriously charging me with all of this?”
“Yes.”
“For what started as a license plate?”
Nathan nodded.
“Pretty much.”
Diane stared at the pages.
“If you had just explained it better, none of this would have happened.”
Nathan was silent.
“You came up aggressive.”
“I tapped on your window and asked you to roll it down.”
“You demanded.”
“It was a traffic stop.”
“You never treated me like a human being.”
Nathan looked at her for several seconds.
“I asked for your license.”
Diane shook her head.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know.”
“What do you mean you know?”
“You wanted this to be a negotiation.”
Diane stared at him.
Nathan continued.
“It wasn’t.”
She laughed.
“There. That attitude.”
“What attitude?”
“The authority thing.”
Nathan leaned against the desk.
“Diane, you seem to believe that being given an instruction by an officer means the officer is disrespecting you.”
“That’s not true.”
“You refused to roll down your window.”
“Because I didn’t know if you were legitimate.”
“I was in uniform, in a marked police vehicle, with emergency lights activated.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“You asked my name and badge number. I gave both.”
“That still doesn’t mean I have to comply with everything.”
“No one said everything.”
Nathan pointed toward the citations.