Range Rover driver gets 8 months in jail for laser jammer kerfuffle
The sentence wasn't so much for having the laser jammer as it was trying to destroy it before police found it.
More than a few car enthusiasts might consider a man who flips off speed cameras a hero, but the person at the heart of this story might have gone a bit too far.
A man in North Yorkshire, England has been handed a jail sentence of 8 months and has been barred from driving for a year after being found guilty of "perverting the course of justice," which is similar to obstruction of justice here in the US.
North Yorkshire police first put their attention on Timothy Hill, 67, after he was captured flipping off speed cameras on mobile safety vans. Further investigation discovered that his Range Rover was running a laser jammer, which is capable of scrambling the signals that speed cameras used to identify speeders and ticket offenders. He was caught doing this on not one, not two, but three separate occasions.
When officers looped Hill into their investigation, he was cagey about the Range Rover's whereabouts, and he subsequently attempted to destroy the laser jammer before police discovered it. Clearly, that didn't happen and Hill eventually pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice. For that, he earned 8 months in jail and a yearlong driving ban. The sentence is heavy-handed, but the judge that handed it down said he wanted to make an example of Hill, according to the North Yorkshire Police's report.
In all likelihood, Hill's punishment would have been lower had he forfeited the jammer and admitted to his crimes. But, as with so many other crimes, it's the subsequent cover-up that made things much worse. Ask Nixon how that one turned out for him.
