When I was 12 my dad let me apply the new registration stickers for both of my parents’ cars. Some time later he had parallel-parked his car facing the wrong direction in front of our house our quiet, dead-end suburban street. Apparently this is illegal. A cop who happend to drive by noticed this - and then took the extra step of closely inspecting the registration sticker and noticed that it was not the correct sticker for that car. Apparently I had mixed up the stickers for the two cars when I applied them (I put sticker “A” on car “B”, and sticker “B” on car “A”). The cop knocked on our door and explained to my dad what he had found. I don’t know what the outcome of it all was, but it was just bizarre to me that the cop had actually taken the time to squat down and shitpick the serial number on the registration sticker affixed to the license plate.
Didn’t happen to me, but I was there: a friend of mine was at a frat party with me, but not drinking. Afterwards he agreed to drop me off near the dorms on campus since I was drunk and he lived there anyway. He forgot to turn his lights on, and was pulled over by campus police. He failed the field sobriety test (claims he couldn’t walk the line because of an ingrown toenail). He was breathalyzed; had 0% breath alcohol. We still make fun of him for failing the FST.
Driving south from Sorento Italy in a rental car along the coast, traveling in a line of traffic on a two lane road. We were all traveling the same speed, no place to pass, no one was tailgating. A cop steps out from alongside his car which was parked on the side of the road and points at me and directs me to pull over. I hand him my driver’s license, he looks at it and in a strong Italian accent says “Massachusetts”, smiles, and walks over to his partner behind his car. Five minutes later he comes back, hands me my license, waves me back into the road, and looks for someone else to pull over.
I still don’t know what that one was about.
Some years back when I drove a beat up, fairly old but running car, I got pulled over in a subrub known for being a bit stuck up. The cop said he was suspicious because I made a u-turn in front of him like I was trying to get away from him. Which didn’t make sense, because the U-turn took me from the other side of a divided street moving the opposite direction to right in front of him on the same side of the street in his direction. He asked me some questions about where I was going, and seemed to be looking for something to bust me on, but then let me go. The weird thing was that my inspection and registration were about 2 years out of date, so if he had wanted to give me a ticket for something it wouldn’t have been hard.
In college, a bunch of us were in South Padre Island in my friend’s BMW convertible, and we saw some girls to impress with our awesomeness so my friend squealed his tires and got pulled over immediately. My friend was from California. The conversation went like this:
Cop: “You may think you can get away with that crap in California, but you’re in Texas now, son. License and registration.”
::hands it over::
Cop: “You’re free to go.”
::drives off::
Driving through a nearby small town on a Sunday morning in my 91 Mustang GT. I had an expired state inspection about 6 months late. The car rarely left the garage and I just hadn’t gotten around to it. I pass a cop and he u-turns and pulls me over. Questions me about the inspection, I tell him I just haven’t gotten to it yet and the car sat in the garage most of the time. Then he starts talking about my car, we chat for a few minutes and he tells me if I ever decide to sell it to let him know. No ticket.
I did take being pulled over as an omen that I should stop pressing my luck and just get the damn inspections on time each year.
Having too much fun. Cops hate fun.
Where is Wildest Bill and his Mexican Fat Burners when you need him…
Well, if you were SIGNING the carols, your hands probably weren’t on the steering wheel. 
I lived in an apt complex behind a strip shopping center in the corner of the township. Got into my car one fall morning to go to work & hit the wipers to clear the dew off so I can see. Due to the setup of the shopping center, there’s a stop sign about 15 yards before a looonnnng light, which was red; therefore, there’s no reason to do anything but stop at the stop sign because I’m not going but a few yards past it to stop again. As I approach the stop sign, a cop pulls in & then makes a U-turn behind me; not a big deal as I stated this is the township boundary.
The light turns green, I turn left & pull up to the next traffic light about 150 yards down the road. If you go left at this light, you stay in the township & straight is the border for the next town. I notice he is behind me in the straight lane. Light turns green, I go & he lights me up. I pull over, totally clueless as to what I’ve done wrong.
He exits his car & walks up to mine, stopping behind me at the B-post (as is protocol - they can see you/into the car, but you really can’t see them unless you turn around). Then he takes a giant, mother-may-I step forward & looks thru my windshield. Then tells me I’m free to go & that he couldn’t see my inspection stickers.
My inspection stickers are in the proper place, the bottom left corner of the windshield, where the wipers don’t clear. Because of the dew, he didn’t see them & pulled me over for not having inspection stickers.
It’s the mid-90’s, I’m around twenty. I’m driving home from hanging out at my friend’s place. We worked at a restaurant and a bunch of us would usually hang out for a while to wind down after an evening shift. No booze or drugs or anything, just bitching about the shift or whatever. It was probably one or two in the morning when I head home. So I’m driving down the street. The only car on the road. Sitting at a red light, I watch this ambulance pull out of a fire station, lights and sirens going, and head the same way I’m going down the street. My light turns green and I wind up behind it. After a few miles, I can see where (I guess) the ambulance is headed, because off in the distance on a side road there are a bunch of firetrucks with their lights going crazy. Shortly after I notice whatever emergency that is, the ambulance in front of me, lights still flashing, begins to slow, and then stop in the middle of the road. The driver gets out. “Oh shit,” thought I. “Maybe he needs help?” I roll down my window as dude comes up. I say, “Yes sir?” Dude flips out, starts yelling at me about how he’s been watching me drive like a maniac and almost hit That Car back at traffic light X. “Sir!” I say. “We’ve been the only two vehicles on the road. I’ve been behind you since you pulled out of the station. We’ve been going 40 the whole way.” He wants none of it. Keeps raving like a lunatic. I get a couple more "But, sir!"s in before I give up. He tells me he’s going to radio the police to come get me and I should wait right here. I say ok sounds good. He gets back into the ambulance and drives off. I go home.
Around 1983(?), driving cross-country from Michigan to California. Going through Missouri in the middle of the night on the expressway. There is no-one else on the road so I’m doing about 80 MPH (that’s as high as I’ll go, even in the middle of the night on the expressway with no-one else on the road.) As I fly under an overpass, I see in the darkness that there is a cop car parked cross-way right above me. I slow down and in my rear view mirror I see he is coming down the on ramp onto the expressway. Soon enough the lights start up and I pull over. We are all gentlemen about it, he asks me to sit in the patrol car with him while he runs through his checks. While in the patrol car, he explains that he is going to write me a speeding ticket, and hands me a pre-printed flyer from the stack he had sitting on the seat between us. It explains how to appear in court to dispute the ticket, where to go, who to contact, etc. He then says, “Or, if you have a credit card, you can pay the ticket now.” He also had one of those old credit card imprinter devices on the seat too. I did have a credit card on me, so I paid the ticket. Thank you, thank you, and I was on my way.
It occurred to me later that perhaps my out-of-state plate contributed to my being pulled over, and that their system was designed to target folks like me. Because of course I’m not going to appear in court a week later to dispute the ticket, etc.
The stop itself wasn’t too weird, but the aftermath sure was.
Back in the 90s, I got pulled over in WV for speeding in the middle of the night. Cop took my license and info, went back to his car, comes back with a blank business card with a phone number hand written on it. He tells me to call the number during business hours and they would tell me the ticket amount and how to pay it or dispute it.
I called the number about 3 times in the next couple of weeks, each time it rang and rang with no answer, no recorded message, no answering machine, nothing.
About 2 years later, pulled over again on the same highway for speeding. I told the new cop about the previous ticket and why I hadn’t paid it. He goes to his car and comes back with a different phone number hand written on a blank business card and says to call this number instead and they will settle everything.
I call the new number the next day, which immediately went to a “we’re sorry, the number you have called is not in service” recording. I gave up trying to be honest and have not been back to West Virginia since.
When I was 18, I ran a cop off the road, and got let off very lightly.
My buddy’s parents had a cabin in the mountains, and a bunch of us were meeting there for a weekend of partying. I had my girlfriend in the passenger seat, and an ice chest full of beer in the bed of my pickup. We were in the foothills on a two-lane road with a 50 MPH speed limit, and for a while I was stuck behind two cars that were doing 30 - 35. The road wasn’t terribly windy, but enough so that the center line was double-yellow through most of it.
A straightaway finally appeared, with a broken yellow centerline, and no one was coming the other way, so I punched it to try to get around these slowpokes. I really only had enough time to get around one of the cars before the broken-yellow centerline ended. But I was pissed, so I said “fuck this” and tried to make it around both cars. By the time I was passing the front car, the centerline was double-yellow again, and a curve was coming up quickly.
Of course, right then, a highway patrol car came around the corner towards me. I swerved back onto the right side of the road, and he swerved off the road entirely. Around the corner was another straightaway, and as I was speeding down it I saw the cop turning around to come after me. He was a good quarter-mile behind me at that point, but I didn’t wait, I just pulled over.
By the time he got out of his car and stormed up to me, I had my license and registration out, and attempted to hand them to him. He waved them away and said “give me the keys.” I did, and he hurled them at his car. Then he told me to get out.
He yelled at me for I-don’t-remember-how-long about what a stupid maneuver that was, and how he should take me to jail… I don’t really remember that part of it. I must have been visibly shitting my pants, because after he was done he went back to his car and wrote me a ticket for crossing the double-yellow line. A $39 fine and a point on my record. That’s it. He never even looked in my ice chest.
Another time, a couple of years later, about 1991, I was driving home to the Bay Area from L.A. I was on I-5, just out of the Grapevine, in my '87 Honda Accord. A cop suddenly came up behind me and lit me up. I looked at my speedometer… 90 in a 65. Oops!
He said he clocked me at 85, but then he wrote me up for doing 75. Which was dandy with me, of course - only 10 miles over is a much smaller fine. As he was writing the ticket, he was pleasantly making small talk: “these little Hondas run great, don’t they? Not a day goes by I don’t pull over a few of these.”
I had a similar one- my previous job was in a very, very bad neighborhood- open drug deals on the street bad. The police knew all of our cars and kept an eye on us, which was nice. One day I was driving to work and got pulled over. The officer asked for my license, asked if I was having any trouble getting to/from work or with the neighbors wandering onto our property, etc. I finally asked him why he stopped me; his response?
“Well, my partner (still in the patrol car) and I were wondering what you were listening to on the radio. You were having way too much fun singing along, and we’re just dying to know what it was.”
:dubious:
That sounds scammy as hell. If someone had answered, they’d probably tell you to wire the fine money somewhere.