What is your worst experience with the police?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

The tailgating thing is something they do to generate tickets. I used to get this a lot in my motorcycling days, and even sometimes when driving.

If someone is tailgating, you’ll naturally check your mirrors a lot. This will cause, if you’re not really careful, your vehicle to weave just a little bit from left to right, as you glance from the left to right mirrors.

Now you’re weaving, and the officer has a reason to pull you over, because he can “reasonably” suspect that you’re driving impaired.

22

I was driving on the road I live on, single lane country road in the middle of nowhere. Some jackass in loud pickup starts tailgating me, so I did my usual asshole move and slowed down.

Jackass proceeds to pass me on a double-yellow just as we’re getting near my house. I stopped at the end of my driveway to bring in the garbage can, he slams on the brakes and shouts something loud and indistinct, I shrug and haul my garbage can up to the garage.

Two hours later a county sheriff arrives at my door, apparently jackass stated that i swerved into the other lane to prevent him from passing, and then I got out of my car in my driveway to threaten him.

I said “nope, neither of those things is true.” County cop says “Did you get out of your car?”
I replied “Yes, but only to get my garbage can. By the way, he was already past my driveway, so clearly he was able to pass me and as you can see this road is double yellow all the way down to the intersection. If he hadn’t slammed on his brakes, he’d have been over the hill by the time I got out of my car.”

Cop says “Sounds like you got out of your car to threaten him, I’m giving you a ticket for disorderly conduct.”

I went to the DA and he agreed to reduce it to “Excessive Noise”, which makes no fucking sense, but I didn’t have the time or inclination to fight the thing in court.

23

Or, in parts of PA, “He was acting suspicious constantly looking in his mirror and avoiding eye contact with me”. WTF? Why not just say “I wanted to hassle him and I did”. That I could at least believe.

24

Not really abused per-se. But I think they pulled one over on me.

I live very rural mountains. Two sheriffs cars pull in my driveway. Not at this point, my Wife was late getting home (pre cell phone) and I was concerned. Now I was REALLY concerned. I nearly collapsed like the Mom did in Saving Private Ryan.

Anyway, they have some story about a wanted woman using an alias (?) using my house as a physical address. No we don’t have a search warrant, but could we come in and look around?

Well, I was so relieved nothing was wrong with my Wife I let them come in and look around. In hind site, my house has LOTS of windows (solar) and would be an ideal place to grow certain substances (this was before pot was legal in CO). I’m almost sure that was the purpose of the visit. One of the cars was a DARE vehicle complete with drug dog. I didn’t put two and two together until they left.

25

Asshole Officer McDonald

26

Pretty much the only “experience with the police” I have had was about 10 years ago, right after I moved into my current townhouse; a couple of officers knocked on my door at 10 PM and told me that they had received complaints about noise. What I assume happened was, the people who were living two doors down had their music turned up for some reason, and someone looking in the general direction of the noise saw that my lights were turned on.

27

When I was maybe eight or nine, my friend Jim was over. It had gotten dark, and we were outside picking up the stuff we were playing with. Jim was down by the garage and I was up at the top of the driveway getting something. I saw two sets of headlights coming down the street. Jim is pretty cool. I wanted to impress him. When the cars were just about to pass, I yelled “Hey Jim! Watch this!” Then I dropped my pants and mooned them.

That’s when the officer driving the second car turned on the flashing lights and came to a halt before backing up to our driveway.

28

I used to get this a ton. My response was always to pull over until they go by. It’s weird but I’ve never been called on it.

My worst was my first encounter here in Chicago. My car was stolen and while making the report the officers accused me of faking the theft to get out of the payments. Their evidence? Black guy driving a year-old Honda is apparently quite suspicious. After taking the report they said they had to share their suspicions with my insurance company. “You do that, officers - I’m sure they’ll find your deductive abilities as interesting as I have.” :rolleyes:

The car had been stolen by joyriders who’d wrecked it and set it on fire while I was making the report (or I’m just that good). After confirming the carcass was mine, I was told to have it removed immediately or be cited for blocking a roadway and it would be impounded. Even the CFD, there to put out the fire, raised their eyebrows at that.

29

Dormont PA, Betty the meter-maid, and the old style meters with red and yellow flags.

I come out to my car to see her writing the ticket. I look and see the yellow flag is still up and it hasn’t gone to the red “expired” flag yet and point this out. She looks down her glasses at me and says “If you read the flag you will see it says violation”. I paid the ticket.

In all my life, that is the only time I got written on a yellow. Not even in Philly!

30

In my experience, the yellow flag was indeed a “Violation,” it usually indicated a broken meter which was illegal to park at. If you genuinely have time on the meter, there would be a needle pointing to the number of minutes remaining and neither flag raised.

31

My worst experience, without a doubt, was the time that I was called to provide traffic assistance while DPS worked a major, head-on car wreck. This was mid-70s, so seat belts weren’t that big a deal at the time, and baby seats were non-existent.

One of the women came to as they were loading her onto the ambulance and started screaming for her baby. While they rolled off, we started looking for the kid. We finally found her.

The kid was about a year old. She had been ejected from the car with such force that she flew in a huge arc until she hit a telephone pole that had climbing pegs like this. One of the pegs had penetrated the hollow of her throat and she was hanging from it. I still have bad dreams about it, 40 some-odd years later.

32

Late 70s. They made me throw away a bag of pot. Cops have always treated me well. Then again, I’m a white guy.

33

I’ve had three not-so-happy encounters:

When I was eight, my mom knocked a policeman off his motorcycle (long story involving a dog, the SPCA, and mom turning from the wrong lane). I thought she was going to be hauled off to jail, but she was sobbing so hard he didn’t even give her a ticket.

When I was 20, a friend was giving me a ride home after work. He pulled out into traffic in a haphazard and dangerous manner, and was signaled to pull over by a pair of Houston policemen. Instead he turned right and kept going. Boy, did they turn around fast! My friend finally stopped after I screamed his ears off. The policemen approached each side of the car, guns pointed at our faces. That was scary.

But the worst happened during my first ride on a Harley, on my first date with my new boss (waitressing days). We approached a lane closure, marked by orange cones. He started to merge into the other lane, and some asshole in that lane actually sped up to block us. I rarely get mad, but his putting us in danger like that made me furious. For the one and only time in my life I shot the bird at another human. My date was forced to ride through the cones. He didn’t see my gesture.

A motorcycle policeman pulled us over. The first thing he did was stride up to me, point his finger in my face and say “Did your mother teach you to do that?” I could see my date bristle up, so I was forced to tell him what I’d done. I was beyond humiliated.

The policeman said he saw the whole incident and wouldn’t have stopped us if I hadn’t made the gesture I made. Oops :o

That said, I have much respect for the profession. Any time I have the chance I wave at them and yell “thanks!”

34

Coming home from work one evening about 10:30, a sheriff’s deputy and his trainee pulled me over because I was driving a red truck, and they were looking for a red truck. Apparently, they had gone out on a call of suspicious activity in a neighborhood, and “red truck” was all they had to go on.

I had taken the long way home from work, as I quite often do, for an opportunity to unwind and listen to the radio and a few minutes of “me” time. The deputy pulled in my driveway right behind me, told me why he stopped me, and asked me about my most recent whereabouts. I explained to him that I was just now arriving home from work, and why I was approaching the house from that direction (long way home, remember).

Bigshot bossman in front of his trainee didn’t believe me. I repeated my story. Not getting anywhere. One more time. Still no go.

He asked my permission to search my vehicle. Yes, please! Do whatever you have to do! He finds nothing.

A few more questions. Still telling you the truth, deputy. In fact, I’ve been nothing but as honest, truthful, forthright, polite, helpful, and respectful as I possibly can be. Now, after about 20 minutes of this flashing lights in my driveway, search my vehicle, emabarrass me in front of the neighbors crap, he says, “I just don’t believe you.”

And that’s when I quit with the polite, helpful, and respectful bit. He just called me a liar to my face. So I said, “I don’t know what else to tell you, then. Leave me alone and hit the road, or do whatever it is you think you have to.”

While he obviously didn’t like that, he knew there was nothing further to be done. And with a little bit parting snideness, away they rolled.

35

Middle aged White dude here. My last experience with cops was actually pretty funny. It was late at night on a rural road and it was snowing; my wife was driving. She sees a car tailgating on an almost-deserted road, so she slows down to let it pass; it turns out to be a cop, who pulls her over.

Now, this cop had the most expressive face I’ve seen in a while - a sort of droopy, walrus-like face, with a bristly mustache. He takes one look at my wife and his face just sags into dispair. He gives her a talking-too about driving too slowly, though you could see his heart really wasn’t in it, and lets us go.

My take: he was bored absolutely shitless and really, really hoping to snag a drunk driver. One glance at my wife was enough for him to know exactly why she was driving too slow - city type, snowy, at night - and that there was no hope whatsoever that she was drunk.

36

Growing up in a small town and as a high school kid, I was in the back seat of a convertible one day with about 5 other friends when we passed the “local cop” jogging who was a gung-ho state trooper that actually lived in our town.

I yelled covertly something to the effect of “$%^ing pig” because I was a stupid self entitled arrogant 16 year old brat :smiley:

The trooper had no idea which of us yelled it but definitely noticed, made a mental note and about a week later wrote me up for doing 56 in a 55! :eek: handing me the ticket with the following phrase:

“Karma’s a bitch aint it?”

I kept the ticket for several years with the intent to frame, but probably lost to time or my parents attic.

In hindsight, I would have done the exact same thing… but the guy was an over officious jerk (apologies to Marv Levy) :smiley:

37

Ha!

A friend of mine as a teen (honest, it wasn’t me :smiley: ) was driving a bicycle raving drunk and stoned out of his gourd late at night down a major street … and ran straight into a parked cop car. He flipped right over the car, landed flat on his back on someone’s lawn; the bike was totalled, and two very surprised cops checked him for injuries (he had not a scratch, just the wind knocked out of him) and pulled him to his feet. No helmet, naturally.

They didn’t even charge him. But one of the cops handed him a business card and said, in all seriousness, something like “please call me if you live to 21. I have a bet with my partner - he says you won’t”.

I dunno if he called … I suspect not. :wink:

38

Helping my buddy move back from Ohio (did you realize that if you don’t lift the pen when writing the “i” Ohio become Oh no).
The plan was leave Fri eve & get there about 2-3 am. Sometime around midnight, we switch & he takes the wheel. Since there’s not much to see at that hour & I’m tired I crawl into the back of the Suburban. Since the seats are all down & it’s flat, I can stretch out & take a nap in the horizontal position.

All’s well & I’m asleep.

Then he gets pulled over for speeding. I groggily sit up, rubbing my eyes, “where are we?”

OH SHIT! Where I am is at the wrong end of the trooper’s gun! :eek:
Let me tell you, that’ll wake you up FAST! I was below the window line & he didn’t see me when he walked up. Nor did my buddy put on the interior lights, which *may *have illuminated me.

39

I’ve had a bunch of encounters with police, almost all of them traffic infractions. I sorta have a lead foot… Heck, I was recently denied for life insurance do to the amount of tickets, I’ve had 8 traffic tickets in the past 5 years, which doesn’t include the number of warnings…
My worst experience was back when I was 20 years old, I just picked my future wife up from the airport, this was just her 2nd trip to the town I lived in, so she had no idea where she was. I was driving home around 10am, clear sunny day, hardly any traffic. I was pulled over for going 90 in a 55 (I-285 in Atlanta, 4 lane each direction expressway, major road, where the average speed at that time was probably 80+). I was a little nervous so had a slight grin when he was talking to me. Ended up arresting me for speeding, my future wife started freaking out since she didn’t know where she was, asked if she could follow the cop, and his response “If you can keep up”.

Total prick, arrested me for speeding, and they tells my future wife “if you can keep up”…

Totally different experience the 2nd time I was arrested… At that time I got off work, when back to my apartment, had a few beers. I had a fight with my roommate and best friend, and ended up running away and jumped in my car (stupid). I was very upset, was driving recklessly, was pulled over for going 90ish in a 65. Cop smelled alcohol and had me do the whole walk in a line and touch noise thing. I refused to blow, but was very respectful the whole time. He arrested me for DUI less safe, but did everything I requested (except not arrest me). Cuffed me in front, gave me my cell phone, locked my keys in my car (I had a combination key pad on the car), instead of impound it. I was able to text out of work the next day, got my car picked up off the side of the road, and arrange bail all in the time I was in the back of the car.

First time arrested, cop was a total prick, 2nd time, cop was very professional, hopefully there won’t be a 3rd. (and many speeding tickets in between).

40

Worst thing - well, there was that speed trap where the speed limit dropped and the sign was painted over.

On the other hand, the police were there PDQ when 2 men came over the back wall that day my 13 year old sister was home alone after school.

And they showed up in large numbers when I called them from under a desk when the lady off her meds opened fire with a shotgun back when I was a receptionist.

When I was 5 months pregnant and the numbnuts driving the Miata on the wet mountain road slid over into my lane and hit my car, they were much appreciated.