The cop stop that wasn’t
The other day while driving in a moderate-sized town, I glanced down to look at my cell phone GPS for a quick moment. Next thing I knew, I saw a police car in back of me turn on its blue light, and I pulled over to the right in response. The police car pulled over directly in back of me and very close to me.
I racked my brain to figure out what I had done wrong. Glancing down to look at a cell phone for a moment didn’t seem to be any kind of offense, and I wasn’t even sure the police officer could have seen me do it. My registration and stickers were all up to date, as well as my headlights and taillights.
So, trying to compose myself—I am always upset by any encounter with police and a possible ticket—I waited, license and registration at the ready.
And waited.
And waited.
The policeman stood just a few feet behind my car, talking to another officer. I knew better than to get out of my car to ask what was going on, but about fifteen minutes passed. Traffic kept going by, but we were the only two cars parked on the side of the road.
Then the policeman crossed the street (it wasn’t a wide boulevard either; just a regular old street) and went into a store. I was beginning to suspect that I was the McGuffin of this tale.
Sure enough, a few minutes later the policeman came out of the store. By this time 20 minutes had passed since I was pulled over—or thought I was pulled over. And at this point he got into his car and drove away, without ever having said a single word to me.
So here’s my question: what should I have done once I realized about halfway into the incident that I was probably not the target of the officer at all? I couldn’t figure out how to get away without risking his ire. I couldn’t even come up with a way to safely get his attention and ask a question about it.
And what should he have done? There didn’t seem to be any sort of big emergency happening. Shouldn’t he have figured out that I had pulled over because of him—it seemed rather obvious—and just waved me on?
That is strange and I am thinking I would have had the window down and when I was not approached made some sort of verbal contact like, “How ya doing?” just to get a response.
You hear about all sorts of strange things that happen when stops can go sideways so, in the end you lost some time but it worked out well.
Speculation might be they were looking for a similar car and license plate, called it in, there was a delay and by the time an ‘all clear’ came they were too embarrassed to talk to you.
Blogger’s privilege.
Once he realized who he’d pulled over…
it was time for a conference…
and then a coffee break…
to make everything look ‘cool.’
I am not sure, but he was obviously racist.
I would have called the local Police and asked about what was going on, ask for a supervisor to show up, after waiting maybe 5 minutes. I have the local jurisdictions non emergency numbers along with the Ohio State Highway Patrol in my cell’s memory. This is really strange behavior, the officer should have at least said something to you. Too many phoneys out there.
Very unprofessional on that officer’s part. You handled it exactly right, not giving him any excuse for escalating the stop. I doubt this is the first time that officer has pulled this, as he did turn on his lights, so pulling you over was intentional. I’d avoid that town in the future, the fish rots from the head down.
I think you did what was best. It seems reasonable to drive away after five minutes passed without contact from the officer, but that would be risky.
Was this in a place where other cars were pulled over or parked? Is it possible he didn’t make a connection between turning on his lights and you pulling over? Pretty doubtful but possible.
I was pulled over on the highway once by a State Trooper. He took enough time before approaching my car that I had my license and registration ready to go. I had my driver’s window down after I spotted him exiting his vehicle through my side mirror. He approached my car on the passenger side and had to knock on the window to get my attention. When he returned my paperwork he approached on the driver’s side. Took me by surprise both times. I’m convinced he was just messing with me.
You behaved correctly. No harm done. Some cops are jerks and/or strange characters. A few minutes wasted is not a bad outcome.
I don’t see how any follow-up gains you anything.
Where did the other officer come from?
Perhaps the other officer called in a request for help, robbery at the store or something, and this cop was the nearest to the scene. He flipped on his lights instinctively, then maybe saw the other officer and parked. His focus was on the crime scene and the other officer, so he never realised that he had accidentally pulled you over.
He was trying to work up the courage to ask you out on a date, Neo.
The simplest explanation is that something else came up that was more important for police work, as opposed to a very minor traffic stop. Then they forgot about you, or just assumed you would know what to do.
After all, as Adam Carolla has said, most police officers would be truck drivers if they had not gotten into law enforcement. No need to fret over a mistake or some missed communication.
You were correct in your actions. And the Officer (or Deputy ) was either completely unprofessional or, in a way, even worse completely unaware of the situation.
Yes, I have known such Officers.
Flagging him down from the window is an alright idea. But given the situation (he’s either a boob or worse), I don’t know…Calling the police department and asking would have been a good idea too.
First, after you pulled over, there were two policemen. After that you talk of a sole policeman.
Something else must have been up that did not involve you, but yielded geographic proximity between the two vehicles.
I do not get fussy or restless even when I know the cop has pulled me over for speeding. He is doing a data search on my license plate and vehicle, Honda or whatever. Takes time, and it is done for the cop’s safety. I begrudge him nothing, timewise, because I was indeed speeding.
We have surely all learned in the last year of blacks proclaiming victimhood falsely, and the rather large # of cops who have been shot to death for doing routine policing, like stopping a driver.
It is a dangerous job and I respect them, especially for their unfailing (in my Southern experience…yours may differ) respectfulness.
Ignore Steve Walsh’s ill-considered advice that “it seems reasonable” to drive away if the cop does nothing with you in the first 5 minutes. Yes, Steve, it is indeed risky to do that. That is provocative, and also illegal if he did indeed stop you. How many additional charges do you want filed against you by fleeing, Steve? Turning a moving vehicle ticket into a felony? That is nuts, not just “risky”.
What got my attention right away was that you said it was a blue light. Isn’t red the color standard that police use for a pull over? I think the cop wasn’t trying to pull you over and didn’t think that you were waiting for his attention.
After five minutes, with the officer(s) that close to your car, you could have turned on your left turn signal, without moving the car. Sort of an illuminated “Hey, are you going to arrest me or can I leave?” But then, most of my driving is in rural Minnesota, where the police officers are good-natured.
LEOs turn on the lights whenever they need to respond to some emergency and want the cars in front of them to leave the lane they are in. They also with sirens do it to run red lights and various other things, like ambulances. Some people abuse that power for convenience, but if they are parked, this may or may not have anything to do with pulling people over.
You might be able to inch 10 feet over to forward and see how people react. If he turns on the sirens, that might be because he needs you to wait but he isn’t going to get out yet.
Could also be new guy checking license plates and doesn’t know how the computer works.
Getting intel using a smartphone recording as a mirror, or using loud voice communication from that far a distance shouldn’t spook them too much. They’re kind of like critters due to Police Academy training.
I agree with Geoffrey Britain that you did the exact right thing and the cop’s behavior was unprofessional. As soon as he realized that you were stopped because of him he should have apologized and cut you loose.
Having said that, Yankee’s comment about cops being truck drivers if they hadn’t gotten into law enforcement was stupid. I was a cop in Detroit for a little while in the ‘70’s and one of my classmates in the police academy was a graduate of the University of Michigan law school. Others had college degrees or experience as MPs in the military. For that matter I’ve known some very intelligent truck drivers.
They obviously cover areas with a lot of drama i.e. crime, so, I don’t know how representative this is of what happens all over our country on a daily basis, but, we seem to be inundated with drugs.
If you watch the show PD Live on Fridays & Saturdays, where they follow 6 or 7 police departments live–interspersed between the domestic disputes, “robberies in progress,” car and motorcycle chases, public intoxication, bar fights, shoplifters, raids on drug dealers, suspicious people, and serving warrants–you’ll see an incredible number of traffic stops–for things like no license plate light, tail or headlight out, no tags at all, weaving, no turn signals, blowing through stop signs, or it raises the cop’s suspicion if you are just parking at night in the parking lot of a business that is closed, etc.
I’d say about 80-90% of the time, when the cop stops somebody, there is a strong odor of marijuana or alcohol coming from the car, the driver is intoxicated, or there is drug paraphernalia in plain sight, and, when they check, a lot of times the driver has a no or a suspended license (one 30ish young woman they stopped had something like 26 suspensions), outstanding warrants, and when they search the driver and/or passenger, and the car itself, the cops almost invariably find paraphernalia and some sort of narcotics (usually of several different types), and/or a (usually stolen) gun in the car.
In a lot of these cases, the cop approaches the car with his hand on his gun, or his gun drawn and, given the number of cops that have been shot in the line of duty these last few years, I
don’t blame them.
However, it seems to me that this makes the chance of you getting arrested, or even shot if you step out of line and do something stupid or unexpected, way too high these days.
I doubt this is the first time that officer has pulled this, as he did turn on his lights, so pulling you over was intentional.
One possibility, though unlikely. I was pulled over about 30 years ago on I 5 in California when I was on my way back from Mexico. I had a carload of kids asleep. The CHP officer pulled me over and came back to the car and ranted at me that my headlights were too high. It was an SUV (a GMC Jimmy) and had off road ties so I said I would have the dealer check the headlight aiming.
I expected to get a fixit ticket and go on. Instead He spent a half hour checking my registration and periodically ranting at me about my “obscene” headlights. He finally let us go after almost an hour. I wrote a letter to the CHP commander.
I later read about a CHP officer that was pulling over young women in that same area and raping them. I don’t know if it was him.
The respondents here seem akin our melanotic brethren and sistern who deemand reespect from LEOs. I didn’t know so many of you lived in Baltimore!
I guess I’m the odd man out in this…
If it’s 10+ minutes, and the police officer hasn’t paid any mind to me after pulling me over (as I thought), I don’t really see an issue opening the door (showing hands, and being non-threatening) and making a polite inquiry as to the situation.
Nothing major, but just politely asking if he was indeed pulling me over, or if I’ve mistaken his actions.
I mean, I guess part might be my intuitive read of the situation… If I for some reason (body language/motions/etc) I felt like the cop might be a dick, or on a power trip, I stay put and let him have it. But if I feel it’s a safe situation, I don’t see any reason to not inquire while still being smart about it.
So long as you don’t act scared, aggressive, cocky, or otherwise off-putting, most people (and cops are people) react positively to being respectful.
If I made a stop, I would make contact as soon as possible. Unless you were doing something that required immidiate action, i would have run your plates with the computer in the squad before turning on my lights.
If I was stopping for a reason unconnected with you, and you pulled over and stopped in front of me, as in you incident, I would not object to your coming back, and asking why I had “stopped” you. If it had nothing to do with you, I would have told you, and sent you on your way, if I HAD stopped you, and you got out of the car, I would have told you to return to your car.
On of the biggest scares I had during a traffic stop was one night when I was bored, and was riding along with a city car, after my Sheriff’s Dept shift had ended. We stopped a AMC Javelin for erratic driving. While the city officer was writing a citation for the young lass who had been driving the car, ( she had benn all over the road ), I was watching the car. The passenger suddenly leapt out of the car, and ran back towards the squad. I yelled “STOP!” out the window, but the guy kept coming. It was the owner of the Javelin, and he wanted to explain that the car did not have power steering, and his girl friend was not strong enough to steer it without power steering. He could not understand why both the city officer and i drew our weapons on him, when he was just trying to explain why his girlfriend should not get a ticket.
Calling the local PD and asking what is going on, giving Dispatch your location, would probably be the best bet.
What should you have done?
I’ve learned that flooring it while yelling, “You’ll never take me alive copper!” is a bad idea.
Well, it wasn’t inattention on the part of the cop. I can’t imagine an officer wouldn’t notice a car that pulled over right in front of him at the same exact time and just sat there.
In addition to the possible explanations already given, another cynical one I’ll add is that even though you initially did nothing wrong, he was possibly setting you up to pad his “numbers”, seeing if you would do something like drive away that could be construed as “disobeying an officer’s orders”.
What I do know is that if you were african-american, recorded this entire “non-traffic stop” in real time, and posted it on social media, it would be an international story in a day or two with the officer/officers in question under fire for harrassment and racism.
So many possible scenarios.
My take in pollyannish fashion is that you were not pulled over, but any interaction with you would have been a distraction from his primary mission.
Messing with you would have involved approaching your car and interacting with you. No fun otherwise.
One of those mysteries of life.
A McGuffin indeed.
I was pulled over on the main street of Carson City by a local sheriff. I was carrying (legally), so I immediately put my wallet on the dashboard and my hands on the top of the steering wheel. The sheriff walked up, and rather hurriedly said “wrong guy — never mind.” That was it. Never did figure out what that was all about.
i have had that problem..
i beep..
he looks…
they come over, i ask
they laugh
lets go home
duh
how afraid of cops do you have to be to wait for 20 minutes and not engage them…
what the freak did you think they would do if you opened the window had your hands on the door and leaned out and said yoooo hooo
isnt it wonderful when crazy wacko is normal you dont know it
you get the i am a real sheep in persons clothing award.
by the way…
welcome to how it felt in the soviet union..
you constantly thought about what you did or didnt do
to the point you acted autistic and had fewer friends, since this wasnt normal for normal people they drank to compensate..
while you werent worried about a gulag, you did get a taste.. just as the liberal coworker admitted she liked trump to me, and being aspergian, i wondered how she thought about how it felt to be in a mental prison guarded by fear
or that she works in a place where that taste is normal and you forget about it, till the eye of sauron is on you
how did it taste?
That the level of control is such that you would self control 20 minutes of your life into the trash bin of time?
this then begs the question..
what are the things we are now missing in lilfe because we SELF CENSOR and cooperate to the point we choose a different direction…
but fear…
is the invisable master
till you dont fear it
then you get to ignore censors..
and bristle at them instead…
Artfldgr:
Actually, for the first 10 minutes I was sure the officer had pulled me over and would be coming to the window any moment. Then it strongly occurred to me that I hadn’t been pulled over at all. That’s when I started thinking it was amusing.
Obviously, I wasn’t in any hurry that day.
So I waited and listened to music, because I was curious what was going to happen. I wasn’t sitting there shaking in my shoes, sheeplike. I thought it was kind of humorous at that point.
However (as I said in the post), I do have a moment of fear whenever I’m pulled over by a cop. That’s been true my whole driving life, for whatever reason. Part of it is I just don’t like getting a ticket, or interacting with them at all.
Frog:
You don’t have to live in Baltimore to get harassed by LEOs. Here is one who patrolled the highways of Northern California and was about as bad as they get. When caught he not only had a collection of impounded driver’s licenses and drugs, but explosives and kiddie porn.
He also faces 13 felonies and one misdemeanor charge related to a cache of guns, drugs, explosives and driver’s licenses found Feb. 21 during a search of his Deschutes Road home.
He had taught explosives handling for the CHP and was a respected officer.
http://www.chicoer.com/article/zz/20120725/NEWS/120729763
LEOs are like teachers. They often complain, internally, about things but they don’t have the power to force the unions to fire corrupt and incompetent people. They’re just cogs in a larger hierarchy. They are not their own masters.
It’s like blaming a private for a nation’s war strategies.
LEOs cross the line when they defend each other and circle the wagons though, as that makes the divide worse. If they don’t have the power to fix things, at least they should get out of the way of others fixing them.