Forget the Excuses When Caught by the Radar Ranger

David Gray has one simple rule of the road in Los Angeles: Get stopped for speeding by a motorcycle cop with a radar gun and you’re going to get the ticket--no ifs, ands or slick crocodile-tear buts about it.

That means no Mr. Nice Guy routines, no temper tantrums, no bribes, no begging, no buddy-buddy bonding, no temporary insanity pleas. No nothing.

Gray should know: He’s one of those men in black leather knee-high boots, Navy-blue uniform and white helmet who makes his living straddling some heavy-duty motorcycle, aiming his radar gun at passing cars with a deadpan smile that says: “Gotcha!”

At age 50, he’s the senior motorcycle cop on an LAPD force of more than 275 such officers--and his Kawasaki Police 1000 cycle bears the numeral 1 to prove it. Among many fellow officers, he’s known as Big Daddy.

Over the last quarter century, Gray has meted out an estimated 30,000 traffic tickets--often more than 200 in a week--most of them for speeding. Last year in the San Fernando Valley alone, where he now patrols, officers issued 31,074 tickets for excessive speed, and Gray had his yellow-gloved hands on a good number of them.

When it comes to Gray and speeders and other traffic scofflaws, nobody walks.

That’s not to say people haven’t tried: They’ve accused him of wielding a broken ray gun. They’ve blamed the guy next to them. They’ve sworn on cheap motel Bibles that they really weren’t going that fast.

There are the calculating doctors en route to some so-called life-and-death emergency, the lawyers armed with their own copies of the California Vehicle Code and weepy college students with their handy box of tissues on the front seat.

There’s the wide-eyed widower who’s supposedly never had a ticket in 64 years of driving. And the red-light-running lady who thought the roadside “No Stopping” signs gave her license to be hell on wheels.

There are the wild men who pound their hood, kick their tires and walk away from the car, simply refusing to sign the ticket. And don’t forget the divorced man who explained he would have broken the law if he stopped at the light: His ex-wife, who lived at the corner of the intersection, had a restraining order that required he stay at least 300 feet away.

And, of course, there are the indignant motorists who tell Gray to go out and catch some real crooks, not hunch in the bushes somewhere picking on law-abiding citizens.

Well, this gray-haired veteran has heard all the sob stories. But he saves his best answer for the last one.

“I tell them that a heck of a lot more people are killed in motor vehicles than by robbers or burglars,” he says. “The highways are full of dangerous people. It’s my job to get them off the road. To save lives.”

Every day, Gray battles the timeless image of the cagey cop setting his speed trap, a bad rap that dates back to his roadside ancestor of the 1940s and 50s: The smiling officer in sunglasses hiding behind those Burma Shave billboards along old Route 66.

Nowadays, Gray says, the job has changed. No longer does he just write speeding tickets. He also investigates traffic accidents and other crimes: He’s the officer who arrives moments after a mishap to help distraught drivers sort things out and right their lives again.

But nobody has that image of the motorcycle cop. Rather, it’s the guy with the itchy fingers and ink-bleeding book of traffic tickets, the one who dares motorists to “Go ahead, make my quota.”

Gray takes their anger in stride: No ulcers here, folks.

“Experience has taught me that most people who get tickets are mad at themselves,” he says. “I just happen to be the guy standing there.”

See, motorcycle cops do have a heart, Gray says. Off duty, he’s just a regular guy with a wife and two grown kids who, on weekends, likes to tool around his Simi Valley neighborhood in a Model T Ford he refurbished himself.

Gray has a kinship with the Little Guy. Take his beat along Roscoe Boulevard in the Valley: His bosses want him to write up every motorist going 10 miles over the 35 m.p.h. posted speed limit.

Gray knows he’d get writer’s cramp with those rules. So he sets his own threshold at 53. Push him a single digit above that, though, and you’re a goner.

This man on a motorcycle has his favorite spots, places like shady driveways and vacant gas station lots where he sets up shop, watching traffic for Fast-Lane Freddie.

He gauges Freddie’s speed, then trains the hot-rodder in the cross hairs of his newfangled radar gun for confirmation.

Bingo!

Then it’s a quick kick-start of his bike and Gray is off to write another summons, save a life, maybe even make a new friend.

He’s one cop who takes his work seriously. But would Mister Ticket Man bag his own mother for speeding?

“Absolutely not,” he says. “I don’t give tickets to my mother, my family or my close friends. It’s like the baker who takes home the excess bread each night. It’s like a perk of the job, a freebie.”

When it comes to writing speeding tickets, even Big Daddy has his price.