Cops: Upstanding Citizens or Arrogant Pigs?

You often see in movies the Austrian or Yugoslavian bank robbers cursing cops in their thick foreign accents, calling them filthy slime or arrogant assholes. Realizing that movies do not always equate to real life, I disregarded their hatred as Hollywood fiction. You see, I'm only 17 years old, more or less a good kid, and up until yesterday, I had never had a run-in with my local PD. But once I got pulled over, I saw that, just like every lie has an ounce of truth, so does a good action adventure film.

The story begins as I'm leaving my friend's house at about 12:40 in the morning. We had been playing poker and Taboo and my mother and I had previously agreed that I would be home by 1:00 that night. I live a little over 20 minutes from the kid's house, so as you can see, I had to push it to get home on time. Also, in my state of Florida, a 17 year old can not legally drive after 1:00 AM.

Anyway, I'm driving over the speed limit like I always do. Not going 100 mph but like 55-60 in a 40 zone. Keep in mind, these roads are absolutely deserted, not a car in sight. Well sure enough a cop pulls me over and asks me if I knew what I was doing wrong. Thinking to myself, "stereotypical as hell," I politely assure him I knew I was speeding and explained my situation of trying to be home by curfew. He then asks me if I know the speed limit. I guessed it was 45. It was 40. He then said to me, "I had to go 65 mph to catch up to you so you must have been going 25 over the limit." Now, an astute person would notice a problem here. To catch up to someone, you must be going FASTER than them. Therefore, I clearly was not speeding by that much.

He then also informs me that I "blew through" a stop sign. Truth be told, I don't really stop at stop signs in general unless I need to. But you must understand, I was turning at that stop sign, so I obviously slowed down to a near stop in order to make a 90 degree turn to the right.

Here's the first part that really grinds my gears. After he takes my license and registration, he goes away for 10 minutes. By this time, it's about 1:10, past my curfew. This cop had the nerve to walk back to me just to say, "oh by the way, I could also write you a ticket for being out past curfew." My self control kept me from flipping out and informing him that he is the only reason I'm out too late. Thank you self control.

The officer then pulls the old "let me rattle off all the laws you broke and how much it would total in fines, but since I'm such a nice guy, I'm going to let you off with a warning" trick. I'm thinking to myself, "shut the F up." Out loud, I thank him vigorously. He then tells me that since it's just going to be a warning he's going to call my mom. Awesome. And then he mocks me by saying, "I really don't want to stir up any trouble at home." Oh I'm glad, because my mom loves getting calls from the cops in the middle of the night.

My mom speeds too, so I don't think she was too mad in the end; mostly just pissed about being woken up at 1:15 in the AM.

I guess the thing that bugs me most about cops is all the BS rhetorical questions. "Would you rather be late or get into an accident?" he asks me. Well sir, I'd rather be late than crash, true. But if you change my options to "be late, get into an accident, or speed and be on time" I'll take the last one any day.

And don't give me any of that "he was just doing his job" or "speeding really is dangerous" in my comments. I've never been in an accident and I don't plan to be in one. And you know what? I'm a wild and reckless teenager. And until I die because of it, I'm going to keep on living that way.

Rant Complete.