I have noticed recently in my area and many others across the US the incidents of fake police officers victimizing people has increased and sadly most of the advice about what to do when you aren’t sure could work against you if they are real.

In a seminar a few months ago an officer mentioned what I thought sounded like the absolute best way to handle an encounter with an unmarked police vehicle or plain clothed police officer.

Here in Texas we had 2 (that they know of) incidents recently where a fake police officer approached people who appeared drunk and threatened to arrest them if they didn’t pay him cash.

I have only a little sympathy for someone who gets robbed cause they are too drunk to realize no real cop would ever do what he was trying to do and if they did you still shouldn’t go along with it.

But this could also be used to sexually assault or murder someone so lets discuss this a bit. If you are in your car the best thing to do when being pulled over by an unmarked car and you aren’t sure they are real you can:

1. Put on your 4 way emergency flashers to show the officer if he really is one that you aren’t failing to comply.
2. Use your cellphone to call police and tell them where you are at and that someone in an unmarked car is trying to pull you over. They can and will tell you if he is real and contact the officer so her doesn’t come up to the car mad cause you weren’t complying fast enough. Once they realize it is just fear for your safety things should be good.
3. Still always try and stop in a well lit public place if at all possible but number 2 is most important of them all…call the police!

Now when approached by someone claiming to be an officer and hassling you simply request to call 911 and talk to police to verify him. Also ask him to show you his official ID. Any legitimate officer should have no issue with this.

Had the people here that got robbed simply said let me call the police they would not have even been robbed from what it seems since no threat of physical harm was used. He would have just ran and picked someone else.

Things like this make an already nightmare job of being a cop even worse. Don’t just drop your guard cause someone walks up and says they are a cop, check em out it is your right and duty.

The Judge
Total Security
Stun Guns, Pepper Sprays, Expandable Batons

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 12:04 am and is filed under Crime, Self Defense, Women's Safety | . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.