If you're an Iowa state trooper in plainclothes who is driving the governor around in an unmarked SUV that isn't an official police vehicle, if you feel that another motorist cut you off perhaps you should radio for assistance instead of trying to pull over the miscreant yourself by repeatedly trying to pull in front of the car to force it to stop in the middle of the interstate, a trick any other garden-variety mental midget road-rager might attempt to pull. You just might be mistaken for one:
"Jessica Lown, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Public Safety, said today: 'The trooper believed he was being cut off by another driver and he attempted to make a traffic stop. It’s not a typical law enforcement vehicle so the trooper had some trouble getting the driver pulled over.'
...
The Pacifica’s driver did not lead the trooper in a pursuit, but simply continued to drive."
We wouldn't have stopped either.
“'I wouldn’t say there was any immediate danger, that’s not been my impression,' Lown said."
Then why try to make the stop at all instead of letting local law enforcement do their jobs? This situation could have gone sideways very quickly, all because a trooper rightly or wrongly got a little miffed over the driving skills of a fellow motorist and decided, despite the fact that he was unrecognizable as a police officer as well as in the middle of performing a different task than traffic duty, to use his police powers to chase the miscreant down and give him a little lecture.
The car's driver, Edwin Allen, who had his wife and two young children in the car, stopped immediately when flashed by marked West Des Moines police cruisers, no doubt relieved that the imbecile tailgating him the for the last few miles was finally going to get his comeuppance. Imagine Allen's surprise when he found out that it was the governor's official car that was riding his bumper.
Allen was not cited in the incident, and has now filed a formal complaint against Trooper Michael Clyde. I guess now we know why Clyde had been previously relegated to chauffeur duty.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
They call it "bodyguard" duty. It leads to lots of overtime, wine, women and song. Sadly, Clyde is the cream of the crop.
Yikes. If I were governor, methinks I'd want someone with a little cooler head in that position.....and quite frankly, it doesn't say good things about the governor that he allowed the trooper to do this. Quite frankly, the officer could have gotten himself and the governor killed doing that kind of thing.
Post a Comment