Because all the murders have been solved already
I was leaving work today, and as I pulled out of the parking lot I realized that there was a cop not too far behind me. And there are four four-way stop signs between me and the next main street, and no one’s ever at any of those intersections. I determine that I will stop completely at every single one and go 25 MPH on the street, as I am supposed to. So I do. Full stops. Excruciating slowness. Last stop sign I look behind me and the fucking cop has his fucking lights on. What the fuck? So I pull over. He pulls up beside me and says (with an attitude like I am some kind of moronic fuckwit)
“Where did you learn to stop at stop signs?”
I look at him like “Wha?” And then he says to me, for real, that I have been stopping PAST the stop signs, by a FOOT. AT LEAST. I am not stopping level with the stop sign, but the front one-foot of my car is past the stop sign. I don’t know about you, but I stop with the front of my car positioned somewhere between the curb and the stop sign. I don’t know anyone who stops with the front edge of their car directly level with the stop sign. I just gape at him. His attitude is very rude and assholish, he’s gesticulating wildly and talking about how I am “halfway into the intersection” before I stop. And he does this mock ‘looking around cluelessly’ motion, like that’s me in the middle the intersection, looking around and not knowing where I am. Or something. And he’s saying I am stopping “in the middle of the intersection” right after he’s just said I overshot the signs by a foot. Which would make for a smallish intersection. He’s talking to me like I am the most retarded person, doing the most insane thing, that he’s ever seen.
So he’s all berating me, and saying how he’s supposed to write me a ticket (In the meantime, he’s never even left his car. He pulled up next to me and is blocking traffic himself in order to bawl me out through his open passenger window.) Then, weirdly and suddenly his attitude changes. The more I gape at him the more conciliatory he gets. “It’s alright.” he says “I got you covered, I am not going to write you a ticket. But you have to watch out, there’s lots of us out here, and we’re hiding all over the place. We’ll give you a ticket for that.” And I am thinking “Mother-effer, I KNEW you were behind me. That was my cop’s-behind-me stop. WTF?” So I said “Sorry, I had no idea.” And then he tells me to drive carefully and takes off. I am just sitting there like “WTF just happened here?”
I don’t know what his story was, or why he was so rude, then so faux-nice all of a sudden. It was so ODD. I mean, maybe he thought I was a student and could be easily intimidated by him, then saw I was a grown woman. Maybe he thought that in that neighborhood I would be someone who was up to more than over-shooting stop signs and he could drug-bust me. Maybe he was just pissed that there was someone in front of him doing the speed limit and coming to full stops at stop signs like cops NEVER do. It was bizarre. So I drove home. And there are a LOT of four-way stops between work and home, and I watched very carefully to see what other people were doing. Guess what? Everyone stops with their front bumper beyond the stop sign. They stop with their body right behind the stop sign (bumper somewhere between stop sign and curb.) Everyone. And the cop acted like I was the only person who ever did that, and I was like Speed Fucking Racer behind the wheel.
I don’t know. I hate to make generalizations, but cops can really suck. Power-mad weirdos who act all erractic and have the power to arrest you. It’s unsettling. I’ve been driving for 20 years, I’ve always driven the same way, plenty of cops have seen me stop at a stop sign, FFS, then this one freaks out on me. It makes me feel paranoid and it makes me think cops suck ass, all cops. And I know they don’t, but they need to really stop with the random petty and subjective shit and get to busting all these people who are shooting people.
Filed under: St. Louis Stuff, crime, the feck? |3 Responses to “Because all the murders have been solved already”
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In other news, I showed my kid a bunch of pics of -your- dogs this morning in anticipation of taking him to the Chihuahua movie tomorrow. :)
And yes, cops can really suck. Last Thursday afternoon, I pulled out of a diagonal space in front of the post office, drove past City Hall next door, and went maybe another 100 yards, and I hear “PULL IT OVER!” Shouted at me from somewhere on the other side of the street. So I looked in my rear view, and saw there was a cop with his lights on behind me. He was not there five seconds ago when I pulled out of the space. As I started to pull over, the cop in the car blipped his siren like they do, to let me know he needed to get by. So I pulled over, and he went by. Then Lizzie said that she saw who it was that screamed at me. It was another cop in a K-9 vehicle, going the other way. WTF? Like the half a second it took the guy in the car to blip his siren was too long for the one going the other way to wait? I suspect blip guy was as “WTF” as I was, since he literally could not have been behind me for more than two seconds when K-9 boy shouted.
Also, I really want to see that Chihuahua movie, but I have no little kids to bring. Must wait for DVD.
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