Well I think that about sums it up!
Vero Beach High School student charged with impersonating officer
I mean really? I don't think these kids were thinking...which is much different from knowing what they were doing. I don't care if they were looking to have fun. There are ways to have fun and how not to have fun. And this isn't how its done.
The individuals who moved out of the way were lucky that all these teens did was pass them. There are so many instances when people impersonate officers in order to take advantage of others and bring them harm.
Sometimes I worry about that when driving on stretches of road in rural sections of town. They're one lane each way, no street lamps for miles, and house are few and far between. Just the woodlands and road. And at night, forget it. It gets hard to see who is behind you when their headlamps are so bright its all you can see.
I asked Sam a couple of months ago what I should do in a situation like that when I'm by myself. I'm fairly petite and not the strongest, and I'm alone. What would be the best route to take: pull over immediately or keep driving at a slow pace until I reached a well-lit area with some type of population? The typical cop response: "Why wouldn't you pull over?" I wouldn't for those above reasons and what if he wasn't a really cop, because there are plenty out there. He replied he hadn't thought about that and it was a good question to ask. I felt proud. I think he told me if I thought it was suspicious or felt uneasy that I could call dispatch to let them know of the situation and to alert the officers of what I was doing and to take it from there.
Hopefully I will never find myself in such a situation but if so that's what I plan to do. It's kind of frightening to think, and again on the topic of accessibility, how easy it is for the public to gain law enforcement accessories even light bars aren't hard to come by. Patches are sold left and right between ebay, other such sites and even through departments themselves, and your homegrown flea markets and surplus stores. Its easy to say in the selling description that these items are collectibles only and bear no authority and that the owner will not use them in any other way. I know that most, like myself are sole collectors but there are the few whack jobs who say one thing in order to gain another. How can you traffic something like that? Some of these people have perfected the art of manipulation or their two-facedness. To stop them you have to stop everyone.
Though there are times I must admit while driving through traffic that I wish in that moment they did some infraction like blatantly driving through a red light, busted tail-lights or weaving through highway traffic like a bat out of hell that I had that light bar and siren because I would love to pull their asses over. And yes even write tickets to the people who park next to fire hydrants or in the fire zones at churches because they're too old to park in that space so far from the entrance or just too lazy and want to be the first ones out of the lot right after communion. I tell you I would have an absolute field day on the weekends at the church down the street. I wonder if I could do a citizen's arrest?
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