I just wanted to share this story of a good friend of mine that has a Fiat Abarth:
For 2 weeks he was parked out in front of my house stopping cars for stop signs (which was fine, I agreed with that, my street is dangerous). He would see me drive by him each day, never doing anything and leaving him plenty of time to inform himself of my car. Then one day he sees me leaving my driveway, backs up over 200m into a private parking to turn around and race up behind me. He follows me for a little while and then pulls me over.
His first statement was I am stopping you because your car makes a lot of noise (I am thinking OK, take at the decibel reader), he then says you modified your exhaust, I say no. He claims I did, I continue to say no, it is stock and legal. He asks for my license and gets on me for the Condition A (for glasses) and asks if I have contacts. I told him I was on my way to the SAAQ to renew and have that removed (which was true) and showed him the papers from the SAAQ as well as the Lasik MD papers they told me to share in case I get stopped. He does not look at them and goes back to the muffler, saying the dealer must have modified it and did not tell me. He said they do that sometimes, that I will need to threaten to sue them and that they likely have the stock pieces in their garage. Again I told him that was not true, the car is sold as is.
He asks me to turn off the engine and looks underneath the car, he comes up and says I have a straight pipe, that he should impound and tow my car, and then takes out his iPhone to show me an exhaust system and says mine should look like that (I have no idea what cars exhaust he is showing me on his phone). So he says wait here and I will tell you what you need to do, we have a guy in St-Laurent that does inspections for us....
He comes back and hands me 2 tickets rolled up in little balls. The first says false information on license without attempting to have it corrected. Again I tell him I was on my way for just that and that I showed him my papers, he says sorry, I did not see the papers, too late now. You should be taking a taxi, not driving.... I say so I should have been taking a taxi for 1 month (the time you need to wait for the Lasik to be 100% ok)... he answers yes.
The second ticket just says illegal exhaust, no explanation, no justification. I say what the hell, why not a 48h so I can have it inspected. His answer. I am doing this to help you, if I don't then someone else will give you a ticket (I had the car for 1 year at that moment and was never pulled over, everyone looks and smiles at it, including cops). He says don't worry, if you go to court you will win.... WTF, waste my time, the courts time and tax money.
I filed a complaint against him to the ethics board, the rejected it on the grounds that it was not a big deal. Now I am waiting for my court date.
In October it will be 1 year..... still waiting, and now I have stress each time I see a cop car.
Update: oh yeah, after I got those tickets I went to the SAAQ, they said it was bullshit, then to the dealer for an inspection, all is stock and legal.