stealthpilot

I had a similar case 7 years ago. Went to court and argued the unmarked police car was tailgating me and I felt like he was posing a collision risk or worse a car jacking risk so I accelerated to get away from him for personal safety. I also ignored the police lights, but he caught me later at a traffic light. I said that since the car was unmarked there was no way for me to know that this was a law officer and not a dangerous tail gater. I also cited various news articles in which people had been robbed by people pretending to be cops in unmarked cars with Flashing strobe lights.

My attorney submitted a sworn affidavit of my explanation and a motion for dismissal. Judge accepted my argument and slammed the cop for driving dangerously in an unmarked car. Charges dropped. He also agreed it was not safe to pull over for an unmarked car.

The police car in my story was a 1990s gold dented Ford Taurus. So my argument that i thought it was some scam artist trying to rob or extort money from me rather than a real cop was genuinely what I thought at the time. Usually an unmarked cop car would be a newer model and properly maintained.

chance6

Yes!!! Love it-

Elliott991TS

I had an unmarked pickup truck on my *** on the freeway, similar to your story, I took off thinking the guys was nuts, he followed me, I exited the freeway, he followed, I then took off on the surface street and he was on my *** for a few blocks until he finally turned on the lights, I was shocked! He pulled me over and I explained I was really scared it was a highjacking, he was really cool and let me go, my heart was racing!

mwlmd

Update. I had my court trial today. The citing officer didn’t show up and my attorney successfully had the case dismissed. I’m very happy with the outcome!

stealthpilot

Awesome. Congrats!

Probably didn't show because he knew he would get in trouble over those shady tactics.

AlexCeres

nah. The cops don’t care about that. They make trials if it’s convenient for themselves because they get overtime pay.

jp884

Cops here in the NW sure love to ride a man in a Porsche. Has happened to me as well but I was fortunate enough that I did not get a ticket. Remember we are law abiding, tax paying citizens so we are the enemy. If you were running on no insurance, expired tabs in an RV that blows large puffs of black smoke he wouldn't even have considered pulling you over. I saw that you got an attorney that is what I would have done.

AlexCeres

lol. OP was stretching “law abiding” more than a little. Triple digits, no signal, and worse, cutting a cop off. He’s really lucky he didn’t score a reckless driving charge even around here where 85 is normal speed. If he wasn’t a doctor with a sad tale of exhaustion saving the lives of orphans, there’s a significant chance he’d have been arrested. Not saying the situation didn’t suck or the cop should have been unsafely riding his *** (at triple digits ? Wtf did the cop want to die ?), but fact is the cop cut him a huge amount of slack in the citation.

Cops around here love to pull people over for expired tags. It’s a freebie to their quota and they have a good chance for snagging expired insurance or another ticket. It’s a gimme excuse to run plates, maybe score a search if anything weird is in plain view, etc. I got dinged once in a parking lot. Cop just went through the whole lot. Didn’t even give me the ticket, they mailed it to me.

jp884

True, I should have written MOSTLY law abiding. But let's be honest, this cop did provoke him to try to get away from him. We have all been there, jack off riding you hard so you just want to pull away from them as quickly as possible. I was mostly venting as I believe if you're going to enforce the law then enforce it across the board. Obviously this is completely anecdotal but I believe that those of us that actually contribute to the system get much less leniency vs those that are constantly committing real crimes not just traffic infractions.

TustinJim

Big fear for all freeway drivers of 911s is trying to get around dim-wits without much notice. That's why I went from Speed Yellow to Silver. And it's so funny, especially for old dudes like me, that highway cops advise you how to "safely" merge onto a freeway after being stopped. When pulled over, I stop so fast the patrol car has to veer right not to hit me. Then I smoke the freeway entrance, and they can't do anything about it. Geez, 911 Turbos are great.

AlexCeres

oh so true. “Careful sir, traffic is moving quickly” ..... uh ..... yah. Thanks officer, I’ll ... be fine.

RideZX6R

In my experience Portland/OR state patrol are the worst in the west.

In any case, if you have a rear-facing camera (dash-cam) maybe you can fight it by showing how aggressively the car was driving.... HOWEVER, it is on you that you didn't just sit there and force him to go around or waive him around. Even if he's the one acting dangerously.


*edit* bringing up a 3 month old thread lol

0luke1

I actually had a pleasant conversation with a cop after he pulled me over (I made an illegal u-turn, but signage was missing). I admitted that I realized I shouldn’t have made the u-turn, but only after the confusion from the missing sign caused me to commit to it (there was no way to go back). He mentioned my rate of acceleration to join traffic and I said “that’s what made it safe”. He grinned and agreed.

rodsky

We've all done this - someone is riding your *** and you sorta want to get away (and the kid in you wants to feel the power and show the guy behind you what the TT can do). It is dangerous and of course we shouldn't do it. And i typically regret it afterwards. About 6 weeks ago there were 2 fast and furious guys with expensive cars weaving on the 405 here. I think one was in an AMG S63 or something like that, the other in an M5. Anyways, they find me and proceed to get on my *** and tried to goad me. I was doing 65-70 in the 3rd lane over. After what seemed like a long time of this and being sandwiched in and annoyed, i kinda did what you did. I punched it (not for very long). They tried to keep up but separation happened immediately . I only did this for a few seconds - got away - and then slowed back down. But you get to triple digits real fast. They were then back on my *** and seemed even more incented to "play". anyways, i kept it at 70 and put on some nice music on the Burm and waited it out. after 30 seconds or a minute they got bored and then took off.

I'm glad you got off but stay safe out there.