Wednesday, August 24, 2005

To serve and protect?

So, last night, I'm most of the way through my 7 minute (if there's traffic and I miss every other light) commute home and I'm behind a cop at a stop sign. A minute ticks by and the cop doesn't move. Now, I'm only one car behind him, so I can see that the traffic isn't zooming by in a NASCAR-ish* way that he wouldn't be able to pull out - in fact, there isn't any traffic going by, zooming or not. I begin to wonder if he has some police-y sense of impending danger that is keeping him from moving from the stop sign.

If this were any other driver, I would have honked and yelled several choice obscenities by now - but this is a cop, he's armed.

Another minute goes by and and I'm yelling (with my windows up) "What the fuck?" and doing those "impatient driver" hand movements. Still nothing. Then one car goes by. Then another. Then nothing and my commute is threatening to go into double digits and I'm thinking I've got two options:
Get out of the car, approach the cop car and tap gently on his window to alert him there are other people on the road.
or
Throw my car in reverse and back up about a block so I can take another route

The first option isn't really valid because, as I noted, he's armed and it's not a smart person who startles a cop.

The second option really isn't valid because, I'm a poor enough driver going straight, I don't know that I could maneuver through the narrow street in reverse.

Finally, out of nowhere, when I'm considering putting my car in park and walking home, the cop snaps to attention, floors it and zooms across 4 lanes of traffic -with cars coming from both directions (some of whom had to brake to avoid hitting him)

I'm left to wonder - what's the etiquette? Can you honk at a cop? Can you drive the length of a city block in reverse?

*Expect this to be the first and last mention of NASCAR here