Last night I was walking the streets of Manhattan with a friend around 1 AM looking for a cab. As usual there were no cabs to be found. My friend then told me that if we hailed a cop car then the cops had to take us home. Now this sounds reasonable if you have just been mugged, all your money has been stolen, and you need a ride home. But she said that you don’t have to be the victem of a crime that cops had to take you home no matter what. Is this true is there a law that allows you to hail down a cop car, and get a free ride?
Sure, you can get a free ride. Straight to the Precinct house, where you may also be offered free overnight lodging after answering to charges of “Interference with Offical Acts,” etc.
I imagine that this would depend on the municipality. I can tell you that this is not the case here in Wisconsin. I know quite a few cops from several different departments (and I myself was special deputy for a while) and they’ll all tell you their department policies strictly forbid such things, even if the person is drunk. In fact, they’ll use the flag down as an excuse to f.i. you (field investigation)
make you i.d. yourself, run you through records, etc.
I’m willing to bet that unless you live in Mayberry and Andy Griffith is still sheriff, there aren’t any police departments that are required to cart your ass around at your whim.
On the UC Santa Cruz campus the police will give you rides at night. They are real police, not just private security.
But I doubt they do that sort of thing in the real world.
There was a TV program here in DC about the 911 system. It turns out it is saturated and people with emergency calls have to wait on hold for too long. It also turns out that nine out of every ten calls is not an emergency at all. They played some on the air. One guy calling and asking if they could send the cops to tune his TV because the picture was bad. A whole bunch of calls like that. WTF are these people thinking?
I would favor an “idiot fine” for people who believe the cops are there to tune their TV or give them rides home. The effect would be to raise revenue and/or the general IQ of those citizens. And while we’re at it, how about a tax for those idiots who can’t follow the arrow on the ballot or punch a hole or read instructions? At least it would offset the cost of the recounts.
If we start taxing idiotic behavior the budget problems would disappear.
As I police officer I can tell you that is complete nonsense. I can hear an officer tell his dispatcher: “Sorry radio I’m unable to handle that male shot, I’m driving Miss Jones home from the store; she’s feeling a little bit tired.” The police have more important things to do than drive people around town.
I had a cop give me a ride home once. I was in a parking lot and my car wouldn’t start. The cop pulled up and asked what was going on, I told him and we tried a jump off his patrol car. That didn’t work and my friend asked him if he could give us a ride to my place (~1 mile). I was surprised, and the cop looked surprised too, but he told us to hop in and took us home.
Typing that stirred recollection of another time, 30 years ago when I was hitchhiking down Hwy 1 in California. It was not too late, ~11 PM, when our most recent ride pulled off of what was a freeway at that point and dropped my friend and I off in a funky looking area - small bars and wharehouses. As we walked up the street a patrol car pulled up beside us and asked us what the hell we were doing there. Two cops - it was funny, one had an obvious dislike for longhaired guys while the other thought it imperative that we be somewhere else. They told us to get in back and took us about five miles down the freeway (even asked which way we were headed) and dropped us near the outskirts of whatever town that was.
But no, I wouldn’t make a habit of asking cops for rides.
Ooh! Another one jumps from the recesses of memory. Back in (strain - I’m pretty sure it was New Year’s Eve 1974) the early '70s, before thay had vouchers and cabs involved, for a couple of years the Harris County Sheriff’s Department advertised in PSAs that they would give you a ride home if you were too snockered to drive on New Year’s Eve. I was in Baytown, Texas, which is maybe 20 miles from Houston, watching a friend’s band do NYE at the Holiday Inn. I decided to test the snocker transportation system and called the Sheriff’s Department. The officer showed up about 6:30 AM, and it was a State Trooper. He was not amused - apparently I may have been the first person to ever have called for the offered ride.
Well, he drove me to Houston (even got to watch him check out a suspected burglary on the way). He didn’t take me home; he took me to the County Jail. No, no, he didn’t take me inside - that’s just as far as he was going to take me. I walked the rest of the way home.
How do you spell “snockered?”
Sailor, of all your post I like this one the best!!!
You should run for office and make this your official agenda! I’d vote for you!!!
NYC cops would get into a great deal of trouble if they left their assigned patrol area. Cops aren’t taxicabs. A good natured cop might, might, give you a ride, if you were a victim and you were local, or might, might give you a ride to a public place in the area if you felt threatened. But it is simply so far against the rules to do something like driving you home.
My '85 Sunbird’s computer futzed out at 65MPH outside Wapakaneta (that’s in the middle of nowhere, in Ohio), at 6AM on a Saturday morning, so the engine died and I coasted to a stop by the side of I-75. My GF and I started walking, and within 10 minutes, a Highway Patrol officer stopped to pick us up, and drove us to the nearest exit, where we could call for a tow truck.
So the HW Patrol still does this kind of thing for motorists in distress, even if local police departments don’t.
PaulT, local police departments will also do this as it is dangerous to yourself and other drivers to walk along an interstate highway.
They still do it in Papillion NE(outside of omaha). But its a small suburb of a small big city with low crime and lots of good people.