Quote:
Originally Posted by johnhannibalsmith
If he's really wanting to press his luck, tell him to learn uniforms and figure out ranks. Then when he impresses someone by calling them by the correct title, he can really bullshit them with tales of his desire to pursue a career in law enforcement.
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That's a great idea!
I have a story about how most people should NOT act towards a cop...
A colleague of mine is ex-CIA and served in Vietnam in '60s. He is white. He was about 55 years old at the time that he and I were driving home after work in NYC. He pulled onto the West Side Highway with his van. The West Side Highway is for non-commercial vehicles only. Commercial vehicles are prohibited from using it.
He had "combination" plates on his big Ford Econoline van. Combo plates allow him to park in commercial zones in Manhattan, yet, use the parkways as a non-commercial vehicle.
So traffic is heavy due to construction. A young NYC cop who is working the construction site tells him to pull over to the side and asks him to get out of the van. The cop starts telling him he can't go onto the West Side Highway with commercial plates and says he is going to write him a ticket.
I could see my colleague getting hot under the collar. All of a sudden he started ripping the cop a new one. He got right into his face and told the cop he didn't know what he was talking about. I had never seen a NYC cop back down before, but he did. He radioed in to HQ and found out that my colleague was right. He apologized and off we went.
There was something about the way my colleague handled the situation that was intimidating -- not in a life-threatening way, but in a scolding, fatherly way. I'll never forget it.
Another time I was driving home from NYC with the same colleague in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. I was trying to merge into a lane on the Cross Bronx Expressway and accidentally knicked the corner of the bumper of the car in front of me. The car pulls ahead about 10 feet and then slams it into reverse and hits me on purpose!
My colleague jumped out my van and ran up to the driver and started verbally assaulting him. The young kid driving the car just shrunk into his seat in the same way the NYC cop backed away.
I don't know why my colleague was so intimidating, but it must have had something to do with his CIA training. Maybe it is because he knew how to take control of a situation when he knew he was in the right and the other person was in the wrong?