I’m a retired police officer and have, over my thirty-three years on the force, accumulated some funny stories. This is one of my favorites:
I was working the late shift and stopped a car as it had a myriad of equipment violations. When I asked the driver for his driver’s license he told me he had left his wallet at home and when I asked him for his name and date of birth he stuttered and hesitated making me suspicious so I asked him to have a seat in my squad while I ran a license check.
I first asked the driver if the car he was driving was his and he replied that it was. As the driver sat in the back seat of my squad he could hear both sides of my conversations with the information channel as I ran the various checks. When he heard me radio in a registration check on the car he changed his story and said it was actually his friend’s car and I was told by the information channel that the car was listed to someone other than the name the driver had given me. I then ran a license check on the driver using the information he had given and, as by this time I was certain he was lying to me, asked for the physical description given on the license. The license of the person whose name the driver had given came back “valid” and the physical description was 6’3” tall and 220 lbs.
I knew the driver was smaller than the description on the driver’s license but to make sure I asked the driver to step from the squad. I am 5’10” tall in shoes and when we stood face-to-face I had to look down an inch or two to look the driver in the eye. I asked him how tall he was and he hesitated, then said, “Six foot three.” As he sat back into my squad I noticed a large bulge in his rear pocket which was obviously a wallet. I had him take the wallet out and go through it in front of me and immediately saw a driver’s license in the wallet. The driver took the license out but told me it was his friend’s license.
The license had the same name as the owner of the car and the picture on it was that of the driver. I had by now known for some time that the driver was lying to me but wanted to see how far he would push it so I said, “I know who you are and you’re not (the name he had given me). He’s 6’3 and 220 lbs. and you’re 5’8 and 160 lbs.” and the driver replied, “I’ve been losing a lot of weight lately.” I laughed and said, “Well, not five inches!”
I then gave him the coup-de-gras and held up the driver’s license with his picture on it, said, “So this is your friend’s license?“and very obviously looked at the picture, then at the driver, then back at the picture so he could see what I was doing and the driver said, “A lot of folks say we look alike.”
I gave him the Late Shift Award for Trying the Hardest in the Face of Insurmountable Odds to Avoid Being Arrested. I then arrested him (Driving After Revocation and False Information to Police).