If you are not sure the person pulling you over is a law enforcement officer, call 911 or pull into a very public parking area and ask to speak to a supervisor.
But try not to get shot whilst “failing to comply”.
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I don’t think i would feel bad for anyone doing this. They’re impersonating someone with authority, sure i feel bad that his father died but that doesn’t excuse pretending to be an officer. That’s a hell of a lot of mental hurdles to jump through to then play the sympathy card when caught.
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If only he’s had rich parents…
The Godamn Affluenza Man!
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What scares me is that this seems to be a common justification, even though departments are lowering the bar for entry and trying to deal with applicants who cheat on the exams:
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What’s disturbing is how long it took the cop to be sure the kid wasn’t actually law enforcement. I’ve read disturbing stories about police impersonations in traffic stops (as a prelude to robbery, sexual assault, etc.), and the thought that the average person has no hope of distinguishing between real and fake cops really bothers me. The real cops are bad enough, but to have people who couldn’t even manage to be cops out there…
Well, he lied about everything at every stage up until that point, so it seems likely he was still lying.
And a search reveals… not only no dead LEO with that name, but “Wysynski also later admitted that he bought the badge online.”
A weird sympathy story given that the cop was going to know (or quickly find out) that no such LEO existed, much less died.
It’s far, far more likely the fake cops are going to pull over real cops (which does, occasionally, happen). The number of fake cops operating in an area at any given time is always low (they’re not that common, despite apparently being hard for law enforcement to spot), they’re not going to try to pull over a vehicle with lights in it (which a fake cop will have, but not an off-duty cop), and are more likely to pull over someone driving poorly or who is female (depending on their motivations). Since fake cops seem to always be male, and probably drive more carefully than real cops (they don’t want to get in trouble and real cops often drive poorly because of police privilege), real cops are more attractive targets for fake cops to pull over, even if they were in equal numbers to fake cops.
So yeah, law of averages, but civilizations may not last long enough for it to actually happen…
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There is serious danger in cops doing stops without proper markings. Not only does it make fake cops jobs easier as people get used to it, but there is potential for people getting killed for resisting when they aren’t sure the cop is a cop.
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This was assuming his father did die i can have sympathy for that, but even if it had been true that should not be some kind of hand waiving for someone impersonating law enforcement.
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In the interview he said it was his fathers badge, who was a cop killed on duty few years ago (he said).
If true the kid probably has some serious abandonment daddy issues.
The closest we got to this situation when I was a police dispatcher was a security guard calling 9-1-1 for assistance after he pulled over what he said was a speeder on the freeway. I don’t know what police told him, but we told him over the phone more than once that what he did was illegal.
It’s not clear how he got the alleged speeder to stop, since most security guards’ cars only came with yellow lights. In my state, cop cars (and only cop cars) come equipped with blue lights (and usually something else, like red and blue or white and blue lights). So if the car trying to pull you over in my state doesn’t have flashing blue lights, it’s not a cop.
ETA: If memory serves, I don’t think we actually sent a cop out; by the time he called, the security guard had let the alleged speeder go. So it was just an information only “car speeding on the freeway and this idiot got him to pull over” type of call. (Sorry, it was a while ago.)
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When the supervisor for the sheriff’s office arrived, he asked Wysynski for the badge and stated that the badge appeared to be real but was not a current badge, according to the complaint. Wysynski then stated that the badge belonged to his father, but the sergeant stated he did not recognize the name as a prior deputy.
His dad could have had a different surname /devil’s advocate, but then there’s this from The Washington Post:
The teen had purchased a real but outdated badge online, according to KOAT’s review of court documents.
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See, now that’s a man bites dog story. Whaddaya bringin’ us ‘cop arrests someone’ strories for @beschizza? You want we give this kid the crime beat? Well do ya?!?!
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Yeah, while decent advise for some, I can’t imagine this will go over too well if you’ve got a lot of melanin.
The trouble is that the sadness of your backstory has no correlation whatsoever with how problematic the behavior it leads you to is.
It is a potential factor when evaluating the potential for rehabilitation or recidivism; but when it comes to what you are doing it’s the same regardless; and this sort of thing isn’t really innocent jape material.
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I remember watching Steven Spielberg’s debut movie Sugarland Express long ago, where one of the plot points were a bunch of hobbyist cop impersonators interfering with the police operation and putting everybody’s lives at risk.
Teenage me thought that whole part seemed totally unrealistic. Like, why would anybody butt in uninvited if they didn’t even get paid? I was so clueless.
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