Folks who know me know that I have very little patience with public and political officials who go around with a sense of entitlement about them. Usually, most of us are able to ignore them unless of course they do something stupid and get arrested, suspended or kicked out of office. But sometimes you just can’t ignore them because they force their sense of entitlement right down your throat.
So, I’m getting ready to pull onto Jefferson Avenue in West Jefferson today and I see an approaching SUV, so I wait for it to pass. When it does I notice two things immediately; one, the vehicle is traveling well over the posted speed limit and two, it’s a police vehicle.
As I pulled onto the road, I couldn’t help but think that if our places had been reversed, then I would be getting pulled over about then and ticketed.
We all see it every single day, everywhere you drive, from sea to shinning sea, a government vehicle, usually, a police vehicle of some sort; state, county or local is driving faster than is legal and for no apparent reason, endangering the safety of other drivers. No lights on, no siren, just cruising faster than anyone else can.
I have to wonder what the result of such driving is. Really, I have no choice but to wonder, because after searching for some time on the interweb, I found that there is no publicly available data on accidents caused by unsafe driving by law enforcement officials. I’m sure that data is someplace but it isn’t readily available.
I myself had an unnerving encounter with a police officer a couple of years ago as I drove back to Ashe County from Boone late at night.
I was driving on NC Highway 421 when I came upon a slower moving vehicle, as sometimes happens when you drive. I checked my mirrors and saw that the only vehicle behind me was a good distance back, leaving more than enough time to pass. (I’ve been driving for more than 30 years, so I trust my judgment in these areas.) Speeding up to 65 mph, I started to pass the slower vehicle, when out of nowhere the headlights that had been a half-mile or better behind me rushed up into my rearview mirror and then disappeared below view as the vehicle drew within inches of my bumper. Fortunately, the proximity of the vehicle’s headlights to the back of my Cherokee illuminated the vehicles front and I saw with agitation that it was a police vehicle.
With the cop riding my bumper close enough to read my radio dial and the vehicle I was passing just beginning to fall behind us, I pressed the accelerator to the floor and pushed the old engine as hard as I could to get out of the way. When I finally was able to safely merge right the officer pulled up along side of me and glared over at me as if I had done something wrong and stayed there for 100 yards or more. I obviously hadn’t been doing anything visibly illegal, because he proceeded up and over the next rise and was gone. I want to point out that at no time before, during or at the end of our encounter, did the officer ever turn on his blue lights or make any indication that he was on any type of official business.
Just a short distance down the road I saw two police vehicles on the side of the highway. I slowed as I approached and looked over, like you do, and noticed that two officers had two young ladies out of a vehicle speaking with them. I didn’t get a closer look at them because one of the officers (I’m assuming my new friend) pointed the beam of his flashlight directly at my windshield really screwing up my vision for a minute or two. Not the best thing to have happen at 6o mph.
Did I call and report the incident? Well, I tried to, but since I didn’t have a vehicle number or exact time and location of the incident, “there isn’t much we can do,” I was told. This was, by the way, pretty much the answer I expected. After hanging up I realized that the exercise had been about as productive as arguing with a drunk man in WalMart, without the possibility for a spot on Springer.
Of course there is another group of ‘public servants’ that take supposed entitlement to the next degree and those are volunteer firefighters. Seems like everyplace you go since 9-11 you see pick-up trucks, SUVs and just about everything else sporting a VFD plate and an ass load of red lights and light bars and usually some sort of, “Ain’t we all heroes,” type of bumper sticker. I only know one NYFD Fireman who was at ground zero. He’s retired and has far too much class to act entitled. His humility is why he is such a good man. But many of these guys (and most are male) fly down the highway with no lights on as if they were on a call, only to be seen a few miles away stopping at the BP station for a cold drink or in the McDonalds drive through lane.
Look, I don’t want to fly down the highway, I’m well past that stage in my life and I don’t mind somebody clicking off the long miles a few mph over the limit. But flying down the road just because you can get away with it is dangerous and shows a level of immaturity that concerns me in a public official.
The NC General Assembly needs to look closely at the conduct of police departments and officers on all levels and start weeding out the unprofessional ones so that officers with integrity are the only ones left. The motto is to “Protect and Serve,” not Endanger and Intimidate.
If you are a cop or a volunteer firefighter take this to heart. We like you, we need you and we want to respect you, but blatantly rubbing you ability to drive like a crazy person without consequence is irritating to the rest of us who have to follow the law. It kind of makes me wonder what other laws they are fuzzy on following. Does it make you wonder?
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