When the law is an ass - again

From time to time I've had the misfortune to meet police who overstep the mark. Most are very polite, professional and competent, but there are some - fortunately very few, in my experience - who seem to take their uniformed status as a God-given declaration of their omnipotent superiority.

I suspect one of them was on duty in this incident.

A Liverpool, England motorist was stopped by a police officer and questioned for laughing at the wheel of his car.

Gary Saunders says he was using a hands free phone when he burst out laughing after his brother-in-law told him a joke.

That's when he saw the flashing lights and pulled over.

Saunders says the officer told him that "laughing while driving a car can be an offense."

When Saunders asked what the problem was the officer reportedly told him that he "was laughing too much."

In the end no ticket was issued and a police spokesman wouldn't comment on the case because the spokesman wasn't aware of the full details.

But a driver's association calls the case a "shocking example of the police harassing innocent motorists."

To be charitable, if the driver was laughing so hard that he was blinded by tears, breathless, and bent over his steering wheel, unable to look at the road ahead, I'd concede that the officer had a point . . . but that doesn't seem to have been the case in this instance. I'd like to know more about what happened - and whether the officer concerned received some appropriate counseling from his superiors.

Peter