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I recently had an intersting encounter with a police officer, so I though I would relate what happened and see if Y'all have other unusual encounters with policemen (good or bad) to relate.
Earlier this week I was driving home and went to get gas. I saw a gas station on the right and pulled into the right hand lane. Then I realised that the lane was right turn only and I did nto want ot turn right, so I swerved back to the center lane. When I pulled into the gas station, a car pulled in right behind me and flipped on his lights. I thought that I was being pulled over for changing lanes without signalling.
I turned off my car and got out (much embarrassed to have a police car with lights flashing behind me at the only gas station in our small community). THe policeman told me that I had a headlight out and that was why he pulled me over. Relived that it would only be a fix it ticket by still annoyed at the hassle, I simply grimaced and said "Ohhh." The policeman asked my to turn on my lights so I did. He walked to the front of my car and said "Sometimes you just tap on them and the come back on." He tapped on the light that was out a couple of times and then said "There, it worked, a lot of people do not even realize that they have a headlight out and all they need to do is tap on it. Have a nice day" Off he went.
To me that was amazing. In my expereience, most cops would have simply written a ticket and looked for anything else that they could harrass or ticket me for at the same time. I have yet to encounter a policeman who would pull you over for something wrong with your car and then repair it for you. He never said anyhting about my swerving between lanes and he must have been right behind me at the time.
Unfortunately, I realized to late that I should have asked him if he could also tap on my heater since that was not working either. Then I could bring him home to tap on my pickup which apparently has a siezed up engine.
I once had a State Trooper T-Bone my car....I was sitting in a turning lane, waiting to make a right hand turn, he got an emergency call coming out of a hospital parking lot...had to pull across 3 lanes of traffic and for whatever reason did not see me.( hmmm ...bright red car)He had turned on his lights and BAM..... Thankfully, the front passenger tire took the force of the hit, because, my then 12 yr old son was sitting in the passenger seat. Troopers airbags deployed and he got burnt from the chemicals. We were pretty shaken, but basically ok. He couldn't have been nicer....His first words after checking to see if we were all right were...At least, you know I have Ins.! Because it was a Trooper, we had all kinds of police cars showing up...Sheriffs, Constables, and City Police. Then it starts to rain...so they put my son and I in the back of the cruiser so we wouldn't get wet...my son starts singing the theme from "Cops"..."Bad Boys, Bad Boys......
State paid for rental car for almost a month, and all our out of pocket expenses...We decided if I had to get hit by someone, this was the best possible scenario!
I never understand why people think the cops are harrassing them when they give a ticket ofr a violations;that is their job. grom watch TV it seems they get harrasssed more for going it;so I gu8ess they think jus6t giving it out with as little convwersation as possible is best. With what tyhey deal with i am sure they thnik a ticket is boring.
I would guess he was testing your sobriety or any number of things when he stopped you. Some still are enforcing laws and serving the public and not just tax collectors.
No they don't always write tickets. Even when they pull you over it's to check for other things like weapons or drugs. A ticket is just incidental.
There are some things that i consider harrassment. A ticket for driving left of center while dodging a pothole on a dirt road (where is the center anyway?). A ticket for going 5 miles over the speed limit.
One time the police came to our house and towed our car out of our driveway when we were home. They claimed that they impounded it as part of a "criminal investigation" They also tore everything up inside searching it. The "crime"? My mother in law bumped a car when leaving the sav on parking lot and did not realize it and drove off. ("Hit and Run") There was no damage to the other car. It took us three hours and $75.00 to get our car back. When I asked why they did not just ring the doorbell, or call us they said "Oh we could have done that, but we decided to impound the car as evidence instead."
That is harrassment. Maybe they were just really really bored. We do nto have a lot of crimes for them to deal with.
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