z0MG!z I Got tProfiled! -OR- How To Stop Traffic In Style

[BY1401]

Saturday was not a good day to be driving a black Corvette in my neck of the woods.

It was a beautiful day, to be sure. I had to make a run out to school to use a computer to finish some homework because my version of Office at home doesn't have Access. I was about to jump in my truck, but decided that since it was so nice out I'd go ahead and take the car. As I'm finishing up my work, I overhear some guy talking to his mom on the phone about a murder that had taken place early in the morning in a bordering county. Before I left school, I checked out a news station's website to see if they had anything on it. They did. Turns out that a witness had identified the suspect to police and given them a description of the car he was driving, a 1988 black convertible Corvette, complete with the plate numbers. I wondered if anyone out there would mistake my car for this one and call 911 while I was heading home and then laughed at the notion, seeing as how my car is an '02 Z06.

Well, turns out someone made just that very mistake. And that person just happened to be driving a Sheriff's cruiser.

So here I am, driving down a multi-lane divided highway when I see a cruiser come racing up in a side lane and pull right behind me. My first thought was that this was one of my buddies messing with me. While I was out at school, I had checked my e-mail to find an invite from one of my friends to come to a big annual party. That buddy just happens to be a Major on the Sheriff's Department and commands the Operations Division, which includes motor patrol.

Now, this stretch of highway passes right in front of the Command Post and as I'm coming up on it, I see a whole lot of cruisers positioned to enter the roadway. Two cars pull out ahead of me and block the lanes while the rest of them pull behind the car tailing me. Then the lights come on.

At this point I'm still thinking it's my buddy. Granted, it's getting pretty elaborate, but I wouldn't put something like this past him. Anyway, I had pulled over onto the shoulder and was waiting for an officer to approach me. Didn't quite work out that way. I saw officers getting out of their cars, but they were staying behind their open doors. Some of them were getting their dogs out, others were busting out rifles, and the rest had their handguns drawn.

"Well...****," I thought.

Realizing this wasn't what I thought it was, I shut the car off and rolled down the windows. I heard a voice barking out "Turn off the car!" and hoped that he hadn't been saying that for very long. Per the barking voice's commands, I tossed the keys out the window, held my hands where they were clearly visible, opened the door using my right hand, exited slowly, remained facing away from said voice, took two sideways steps from the vehicle, and started walking backwards with my hands up.

As I was doing this last part, several things came to mind. I realized that police cars had not only blocked traffic in my direction of travel, but had shut down the opposite lanes as well. I thought, "wow...this is some white trash shit right here. I am that guy on COPS." Then at some point the movie My Cousin Vinny came to mind. Very good movie, by the way. "Did you just say...two YUTES?" Lol. Classic, but I digress. I also knew what the next step was going to be, and I really was not looking forward to it. I had a crazy idea that I might be able to tell the barking voice that it's difficult for be to kneel on account of several knee surgeries, but knew that wouldn't do me any good. I prepared to just suck it up and deal with it.

Sure enough, the next command was to kneel down, place my hands behind my back, and, here's what I wasn't expecting, cross my feet. Jesus H. Christ. The kneeling part was bad enough, but crossing my feet was brutal. Anyway, the barking voice was getting closer, announcing that he was going to place handcuffs on me. Well, I call him barking voice, but he wasn't so much barking anymore. His tone had subdued, but I'm still going to call him barking voice for the purposes of this story.

So, yeah. Barking voice places me in handcuffs and instructs me to stand up, adding that if I try anything stupid, they'll shoot me. I thought that was a bit over the top, personally, seeing as how I though everything had gone pretty smoothly up to this point. Of course, I'm also wondering what it is that they might consider "stupid" and it's at this point that I thought I might be able to inform barking voice of the condition of my knees and to please not consider an inadvertent stumble on my part to be a shootable offense. He said he understood (although his tone of voice suggested that he was merely placating me) and I proceeded to get up rather gingerly.

Once I was on my feet the first question I was asked was for my name, which I gave. The standard "any weapons on you or in your car" was asked, to which I responded "no," and a pat-down commenced. I told them they would find the keys to my work truck, my personal truck, my cell phone, and a flash drive in my pockets, and that my license was in my wallet in the passenger's seat. Barking voice then asked me if I knew what was going on. Answering "no," he then informed me that someone driving a car like mine had just committed murder. "Holy shit!" I thought. "Two murders in the same day...both suspects in black Corvettes...what are the odds?"

Some other deputy had located my license and run it and I heard barking voice ask if anything had come back on it. Another voice replied "no locals," but barking voice wanted what I assumed was a national search on it as well. At this point I told barking voice that they wouldn't find anything and that [Operations Division Commander's name], [Chief Deputy's name], and [Sheriff's name] all knew me and could verify who I was. I thought now was as good a time as any to start dropping as many names as I could.

Everything came back clear, but as one final check, another deputy came up with my license to see if the photo matched my ugly mug. It did, so they let me out of the cuffs and by this point their weapons were lowered and traffic was let through. Barking voice asked me if I understood what had just happened and why they did what they did. I said I understood and then he asked me if I wanted him to give me his card so that I could contact his supervisors if I had any complaints about what happened.

I told him "nah, that's okay. I'll be seeing [Operations Division Commander's first name] tonight anyway."

You'd have thought a puppy had died by the look on his face.

And as it turns out, there wasn't a second murder like I had thought. It was the same one. When I got home, I sent an e-mail to the Sheriff which read:

"FYI, you might want to see about getting some training for your deputies on the differences between the Corvette body styles by generation, particularly between 4th and 5th."

The bright side of this whole escapade was at the time the deputy stopped me, I was doing 5 over. No ticket = win.

[Brock]

Originally Posted by Mile High Mania

I would think it would be more unreasonable to just take the witness description with 100% accuracy and not look for 'similar looking vehicles'.

Oh, okay. So maybe they should have pulled over every black car of similar size and shape they came across. Or maybe even the dark blue ones, because, you know, the witness might be color blind.

[Demonpenz]

Originally Posted by Brock

Oh, okay. So maybe they should have pulled over every black car of similar size and shape they came across. Or maybe even the dark blue ones, because, you know, the witness might be color blind.

what do you think the percent of people who get Colors. COLORS correctly are?

[Demonpenz]

We did a study in college in conjunction with the St. Joseph police department where a person came into our class of 100 people and walked out and we were specifically looking at him. We then were asked to describe the man. 90% of the people got the color wrong, some people thought he was black, some thought he was mexican, others thought it may have been a woman.

truth is
YOU
JUST
DON'T
KNOW

[Rain Man]

Wow. Amazing story.

But I have to point out that you could've retired early if you had only been a little more combative. Yeah, sure, it would hurt for a while to be nightsticked and tased by 20 cops, but you'd have 30 years to heal.

[Brock]

Originally Posted by Demonpenz

what do you think the percent of people who get Colors. COLORS correctly are?

These waters are fished out.

[Saulbadguy]

tl;dr

[StcChief]

so a get outta jail free card might be in your future.

[Mile High Mania]

Originally Posted by Brock

Oh, okay. So maybe they should have pulled over every black car of similar size and shape they came across. Or maybe even the dark blue ones, because, you know, the witness might be color blind.

People make mistakes.

[Donger]

Wow, that beats the time I evaded arrest from about 20 OPPD cops and a helicopter.

I grew up driving a Triumph Spitfire and I got pulled over a lot. One time, the cop walks up and starts asking me questions. After a few questions, he looked at me and said, "You talk funny." I responded, "Well, sorry, but I was born in England." He then went on a rant about Lamar Avenue not being "the Autobahn." I stifled a few giggles and took my ticket.

[kchero]

Originally Posted by Mile High Mania

So, you expect the cops to know the body styles of all cars? They're just doing their job, don't be so over-sensitive.

This

[CoMoChief]

So let me get this straight........

You overheard something about a murder in the area?

You checked the news to confirm, they informed you the type of vehicle, color, model etc?

(At this point I would assume you knew Cops were in pursuit in the area to try and find the suspect).

So you had a choice on which vehicle to take across town to go to school to do your thing. You could have chosen the pickup.....instead you chose the vehicle that is pretty close in matching the one the cops are after?

And before you make the argument that the vehicle models aren't close to being the same....let me remind you that,

A: Most people don't own corvettes, I'm probably wrong but I'd guestimate that maybe 1 in 50,000 car owners own a corvette. That ratio then probably becomes smaller in a sense that not all corvettes that are owned are black. Just saying....cops were doing their jobs. They saw a vehicle that matched the suspect's veh and they took action.

So here's the question I ask to you......
Why would you purposely want to get ****ed with by the police? If you didn't think they would just pass by and see your vehicle and not think anything of it after this whole thing's been on the news.......then I must say "Sir you're a dumbass!!!"

I mean if there was a murder at a corner gas station one evening and I saw it on the news at 9pm, suspect was identified as a tall while male with a red hoodie on and was still at large.......I'm not going to go put on my red hoodie and head out to the nearest gas station and fill my car up with gas, go buy a case of beer or what have you.

So either you're extremely stupid, and your decision making REALLY needs to be questioned.

OR

You were looking for trouble to begin with and wanted cops to **** with you or you wanted to **** with them.

Either way it's stupid.

[teedubya]

Dude, you should have sped away... and got into one of those really cool high-speed chases.

[Demonpenz]

Originally Posted by CoMoChief

So let me get this straight........

You overheard something about a murder in the area?

You checked the news to confirm, they informed you the type of vehicle, color, model etc?

(At this point I would assume you knew Cops were in pursuit in the area to try and find the suspect).

So you had a choice on which vehicle to take across town to go to school to do your thing. You could have chosen the pickup.....instead you chose the vehicle that is pretty close in matching the one the cops are after?

So here's the question I ask to you......
Why would you purposely want to get ****ed with by the police? If you didn't think they would just pass by and see your vehicle and not think anything of it after this whole thing's been on the news.......then I must say "Sir you're a dumbass!!!"

I mean if there was a murder at a corner gas station one evening and I saw it on the news at 9pm, suspect was identified as a tall while male with a red hoodie on and was still at large.......I'm not going to go put on my red hoodie and head out to the nearest gas station and fill my car up with gas, go buy a case of beer or what have you.

So either you're extremely stupid, and your decision making REALLY needs to be questioned.

OR

You were looking for trouble to begin with and wanted cops to **** with you or you wanted to **** with them.

Either way it's stupid.

yes but my hoodie was old navy red not ecko

[DJ's left nut]

I'm usually pretty pro-cop, but c'mon - expecting them to know a little more about what it is they're looking for is hardly asking too much.

Should they really just be driving around and pulling guns on every black corvette tooling around town? It's not like a black 'vette is the most uncommon thing in the world.

A brief detention and license check I have no problem with. But stopping traffic and using several cruisers and cops w/ guns drawn just because you saw a black vette is wholly unreasonable. That situation was one skittish cop away from getting somebody needlessly shot all because a local Sheriff decided to go all commando without any significant fact checking.

That was a needlessly explosive situation. In that kind of environment it would not have taken much to get someone hurt badly. All because a guy was driving a fairly common car?

Nope, not gonna defend that one.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by CoMoChief

So let me get this straight........

You overheard something about a murder in the area?

You checked the news to confirm, they informed you the type of vehicle, color, model etc?

(At this point I would assume you knew Cops were in pursuit in the area to try and find the suspect).

So you had a choice on which vehicle to take across town to go to school to do your thing. You could have chosen the pickup.....instead you chose the vehicle that is pretty close in matching the one the cops are after?

So here's the question I ask to you......
Why would you purposely want to get ****ed with by the police? If you didn't think they would just pass by and see your vehicle and not think anything of it after this whole thing's been on the news.......then I must say "Sir you're a dumbass!!!"

I mean if there was a murder at a corner gas station one evening and I saw it on the news at 9pm, suspect was identified as a tall while male with a red hoodie on and was still at large.......I'm not going to go put on my red hoodie and head out to the nearest gas station and fill my car up with gas, go buy a case of beer or what have you.

So either you're extremely stupid, and your decision making REALLY needs to be questioned.

OR

You were looking for trouble to begin with and wanted cops to **** with you or you wanted to **** with them.

Either way it's stupid.

He said he took the car out that morning and found out about the murder mid-day. He was on his way home when the events in question transpired.

But when have you ever been one for paying attention?