I’ve been stewing over this for a week now and its finally time to rant. So, I’m driving down the interstate to pick my daughter (9 y/o, flting alone) from the airport. As she is an unaccompanied minor, I am supposed to arrive an hour and a half early, but I decided to take a book with me leave early enough to arrive two hours early. As I drive down the interstate, I roll down my window to smoke (last one for a while, no smoking in the airport or in the truck while my duaghter is with me) and noticce that the already light traffic has suddenly gotten WAYYY lighter, slower, and moved decidelyinto the right lanes. I hapily motor along at 9 over the speed limit. About this time I notice the reason for the traffic pattern: three local police cars in the breakdown with lights flashing and sirens blaring. I meekly move over a lane so they can get into traffic and catch the evil, horrenous villian they are after. As I move over, the police move over one more. Okay, fine, I’ll get ALL the way over into the non-moving lane. Low and behold, the police pull in behind me and I FINALLY realize they are pulling ME over. Being the kind, loving, law-abiding motorist that I am (at least when the police are around), I put the truck in park, turn off the engine, and keep my hands on the wheel. No sooner have I done this than th real fun begins. /loud speaker voice/ Driver, puts your hands out of the vehicle /LSV/ I do so. /LSV/ Driver, turn off the vehilce with your right hand and put the keys on top of the vehicle/LSV/ I do so. /LSV/ Driver, open the door from the outside with your left hand and push it open /LSV/ I do so, and peek in the side view mirror only to to o fewer than 5 policemen with guns drawn and pointed at ME. /LSV/ Driver, exit the vehicle /LSV/ I try to do this, but being a concientious drive, I am still wearing my seatbelt. I try to tell the officer this, but he yells into the loudspeaker “GET OUT OF THE TRUCK NOW!!!” I try to comply, and th officer notices that I am wearing the belt. /LSV/ Take off the sseat belt and exit the vehicle. /LSV/ I do so, with hands raised high. /LSV/ Turn around and lift your shirt over your head, then turn 360 degrees /LSV/ I comply. /LSV/ Driver walk backwards towards the sound of my voice /LSV/ I comply until I sense someone directly behind me at which point a police pfficer tells me to put my hands on my head and interlace (his word, not mine) my fingers. He then frisks me and realizes I am safe. Another officer proceeds to search my truck (actually it is a Jimmy full of the detrius of three months without a cleaning). He searches for about thirty minutes, finds nothing illegal or even questionable, and then talks into his shoulder radio. All the other officers on the scene get a bored look on their faces and out their guns away, almost like they were hoping to make the local news or something. Rookie police man and his supervisor stick around to explain that someone driving a black Audi called them on their cell phone from the interstate three miles back describing my vehicle, license plate number and state (I am in the military and have out-of-state tags), and said that I was driving down the interstate SHOOTING at people. They even “saw” the gun. At this point the officer asks for my license and registration. I give him my military ID (always good to have when dealing with law enforcement, trust me) and DL. Rookie taked them to car to run them in the computer. This has all happened in about 10 minutes. Finally, 45 damn minutes later, the officer brings my ID back and says I am free to go. I get back into my truck, light another smoke, call my wife to tell her that I might be late to the airport, and proceed to drive the minimum speed allowed on the interstate. I arrive at the airport, get my daughter, and drive home. The incident scared the crap out of me, mostly because I hadn’t done anything wrong. That is what I am really pitting, that the person in the black Audi got the police to scare me. I SINCERELY hope that they heard/saw something the sounded/looked like gunshots and were trying to do the right thing, but dammit be sure of what you are doing before you call it in.
Very strange. Sounds as if the audi driver was indulging in payback for a real, or imagined traffic slight by you, or someone whose vehicle looked like yours.
That is what my wife said. Surely my bad driving habits aren’t so well known that you heard about them in Alaska. Couldn’t have been any other vehicle, she gave them my tag number.
I’d like to read the OP, but the human organism has evolved to be capable of reading only texts broken up nicely into sensible paragraphs. Anyone who reads the OP, therefore, is some kind of genetic freak.
-FrL-
How’s this?
I’ve been stewing over this for a week now and its finally time to rant. So, I’m driving down the interstate to pick my daughter (9 y/o, flting alone) from the airport. As she is an unaccompanied minor, I am supposed to arrive an hour and a half early, but I decided to take a book with me leave early enough to arrive two hours early. As I drive down the interstate, I roll down my window to smoke (last one for a while, no smoking in the airport or in the truck while my daughter is with me) and notice that the already light traffic has suddenly gotten WAYYY lighter, slower, and moved decidely into the right lanes. I happily motor along at 9 over the speed limit.
About this time I notice the reason for the traffic pattern: three local police cars in the breakdown with lights flashing and sirens blaring. I meekly move over a lane so they can get into traffic and catch the evil, horrenous villain they are after. As I move over, the police move over one more. Okay, fine, I’ll get ALL the way over into the non-moving lane. Lo and behold, the police pull in behind me and I FINALLY realize they are pulling ME over. Being the kind, loving, law-abiding motorist that I am (at least when the police are around), I put the truck in park, turn off the engine, and keep my hands on the wheel. No sooner have I done this than the real fun begins.
loud speaker voice: “Driver, puts your hands out of the vehicle.”
I do so.
LSV: “Driver, turn off the vehilce with your right hand and put the keys on top of the vehicle”
I do so.
LSV: “Driver, open the door from the outside with your left hand and push it open”
I do so, and peek in the side view mirror only to see no fewer than 5 policemen with guns drawn and pointed at ME.
LSV: “Driver, exit the vehicle.”
I try to do this, but being a conscientious driver, I am still wearing my seatbelt. I try to tell the officer this, but he yells into the loudspeaker “GET OUT OF THE TRUCK NOW!!!” I try to comply, and the officer notices that I am wearing the belt.
LSV: “Take off the seat belt and exit the vehicle.”
I do so, with hands raised high.
LSV: “Turn around and lift your shirt over your head, then turn 360 degrees”
I comply.
LSV: “Driver, walk backwards towards the sound of my voice”
I comply until I sense someone directly behind me at which point a police officer tells me to put my hands on my head and interlace (his word, not mine) my fingers. He then frisks me and realizes I am safe. Another officer proceeds to search my truck (actually it is a Jimmy full of the detritus of three months without a cleaning). He searches for about thirty minutes, finds nothing illegal or even questionable, and then talks into his shoulder radio. All the other officers on the scene get a bored look on their faces and put their guns away, almost like they were hoping to make the local news or something. Rookie police man and his supervisor stick around to explain that someone driving a black Audi called them on their cell phone from the interstate three miles back describing my vehicle, license plate number and state (I am in the military and have out-of-state tags), and said that I was driving down the interstate SHOOTING at people. They even “saw” the gun.
At this point the officer asks for my license and registration. I give him my military ID (always good to have when dealing with law enforcement, trust me) and DL. Rookie takes them to his car to run them in the computer. This has all happened in about 10 minutes. Finally, 45 damn minutes later, the officer brings my ID back and says I am free to go. I get back into my truck, light another smoke, call my wife to tell her that I might be late to the airport, and proceed to drive the minimum speed allowed on the interstate. I arrive at the airport, get my daughter, and drive home.
The incident scared the crap out of me, mostly because I hadn’t done anything wrong. That is what I am really pitting, that the person in the black Audi got the police to scare me. I SINCERELY hope that they heard/saw something the sounded/looked like gunshots and were trying to do the right thing, but dammit be sure of what you are doing before you call it in.
Sorry FrL, thanks lowbrass.
I assume the Audi driver must have used their cell/mobile phone, couldn’t the police get them for wasting their time? Since they’re the only witnesses to a crime that clearly didn’t happen.
I just had deja vu.
One would think that anyone dumb enough to call in a false report as a means of retaliation would try to do so anonymously. In which case I don’t see how the police knew it was someone driving a black Audi, unless the caller volunteered that info. (Or do the police ask you your vehicle type when you call in from the road? Seems like they would ask for your license number if they couldn’t ID your cellphone).
In any event, if he was asked what kind of car he was in, or said so on his own, it would be false info if the whole thing was a prank.
Or, the caller was serious, the cops asked him to pull over, met him, got his story and were thus able to know for a fact that it was a black Audi.
That wonderfully obvious point went right over my head :smack:
If the police know the car they probably know who he/she is. Surely there are grounds for a complaint, but then perhaps they are verging on the side of cautious.
People that call in false reports really cheese me off. A few weeks ago we got a call from a (seemingly) hysterical woman who said she’d rolled over on the interstate and her 13 year old was trapped in the car and unresponsive. Then her phone “went dead” before we could get her name, phone number, or anything more than an approximate location.
We had fire units, medics, deputies, and state troopers from two counties out running up and down the road trying to locate this wreck. After a half hour or so we began to suspect that someone had called in a false report in an effort to draw off a cop somewhere. Sure enough, we found out a state trooper just across the county line had been out on traffic stop with a known frequent flyer, and was getting ready to search the car. We’re pretty sure his girlfriend in the passenger seat made the call while the trooper was back in his cruiser. Unfortunately we can never prove it because my agency doesn’t have the ability to track cell phone calls. A disturbingly large number of agencies don’t; criminals know and exploit this, the bastards.
Anyway, back to the mysterious black Audi. A lot of times even if the caller won’t give us their name or phone number we try to find out what kind of car they’re driving, and where they are in relation to the suspect vehicle, because it’s a little easier for the cops to spot “a green Honda with a black Audi behind it” than just “a green Honda”. Of course, in this case I’ll bet the caller was in another car entirely, and when the dispatcher asked he/she just randomly picked a nearby car and gave that description. As to why they did it; eh, people suck. Glad you’re ok.
Are police really barred from seeing a caller’s number? Don’t they have any way around this?
Marlitharn, I think you may have hit the nail on the head with the idea that the driver gave a description of the car they were in. The whole thing happened in a matter of minutes, so there wasn’t time for the police to pull the caller over. I didn’t think of the “describe a car that is close to me” angle to avoid detection, though.
The problem is a distressing number of PSAPs (public safety answering points) haven’t kept up with advancing technology (my center still uses 15 year old equipment, we don’t even have caller ID on our non-emergency lines). So while most of us have no problem getting phone number and address information on landline calls (because that’s what 911 was originally set up to handle), we’re not neccesarily going to get number and location information on cell phones or VoiP (at my center if I called 911 using my Vonage setup, it came in on a non-emergency line). And if a caller wishes to remain anonymous, well, there you are.
Here’s the wiki article on 911, if anyone’s interested. Check out the dispatch set-up in the picture there, I’d kill to have a workstation like that. We only have three screens and no windows! turns green with envy
But now it’s too long!
-FrL-
(I dearly want to leave the above as is, but I’m afraid no one would think it was funny but me. So for the record: I’m just razzin’ ya.)
I also appreciated Lowbrass’s effort, but Billybob please believe I was just kind of joking and really don’t want you to think you should have apologized to me, even if only to be polite!
-FrL-
Thirding the appreciation for lowbrass’s effort. My eyes glazed over when I tried to read the OP and could not read the story until the rewrite.
I made the call. You were indeed shooting people, but I was in the parallel universe where you are evil, you look pretty good in a goatee btw, and I forgot to switch my cell phone and called this universe by mistake.
Sorry.
Mine never works there. Do you have T-Mobile?
But wouldn’t it have been a white Audi in the other universe?