[smuryof]

Originally Posted by Bigg K

Ok, now being a cop myself, I've had a good laugh at some of these stories. I'll let you guys in on a little secret though, honesty is the best policy. Most times we know the answers to the questions we ask (like how fast do you think you were going?). What happens next depends on what you say. If you insult our intellegence (insert wise remark here) like "I don't know" or "I was doing the speed limit" or "maybe 35" when you were doing 60, expect a ticket. If you tell us, I was just showing off, I am stupid, I just installed my new supercharger etc, you will generally recieve just a warning, a good dressing down and probably a request to look under the hood.

Thanks for the perspective. That pretty much matches the experiences I've had. Unfortunately, I think one or two cops with a power-trip attitude, out of a hundred where the rest are all decent, hard working people, end up ruining people's image of the majority of officers / troopers across the country. It's easy for people to categorize all officials as "just there to give us a hard time." But let me tell you, there have been some situations where I was sure glad to have them around.

I guess someone else in Detroit must have had another old rusty Pontiac, because there was one day I'll never forget. This one's mercifully shorter than my other posts:

I was coming home from a buddy's house in Detroit, as usual rolling thru stop signs, trying not to linger too long in some of the bad neighborhoods, and I had just rolled slowly thru a red light (there were some scary-guys giving me the eye) and had gone a block when out of nowhere a cruiser whipped out from the side street I had just passed and flipped his lights on, bumper pretty much kissing my tail. I pulled over right away.

Loudspeaker: "Get out of the car, and show me your hands!!"

I was freaked; never had to do this before - so I put it in park, shut off the engine, and slowly got out. Held my hands up for him to see.

Then the officer got out of his aging Detroit cruiser, and
approached me, gun drawn! Needless to say, I was scared.

As he approached, the gun sagged a bit, he peered closer at me, took another look at the car, then dropped the gun to his side. Then he apologized and explained to me that they were looking for a badly rusted, "canary yellow" full-size, similar to mine, but the suspect was totally different & this was a case of mistaken identity. Then he slapped the side of the car, told me to try not to go thru red lights, and told me to go home. It's guys like that, putting their life on the line, in hopeless neighborhoods like those, that make me more than willing to pay my taxes.