OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma-

This is downright hilarious and definitely something you don’t often see. Judge Wapner’s People’s Court TV show in the 1980s would have titled it, “The Case of the Policeman on a Power Trip.”

An Oklahoma State Trooper was racing to provide backup on a call when he came up on the back of an ambulance that was also in a hurry to get somewhere. With apparently minimal effort the trooper seemed to easily pass the ambulance and within a minute arrived at his destination. The trooper stayed at the call for a minute or two then quickly pulled back out on to the road and chased down, and pulled over, the ambulance. Just as the ambulance came to a stop the parametric in the back exited quickly and confronted the trooper, explaining that he was in charge of the ambulance. The trooper pushed him aside and started yelling at the driver telling him he was going to give him a ticket for failure to yield and giving him hand gestures as he initially drove by.

What the trooper didn’t know at the time was that the ambulance also had somewhere to be in a hurry…..it was transporting a patient to the hospital. You would think that once that was discovered the trooper would send the ambulance on its merry way, so no further danger was faced by the patient. This was not the case at all. I will not get too heavily into the details of this one because luckily the son of the woman being transported was in the ambulance with her, and using his cell phone so graciously caught the whole incident on video for our viewing pleasure and the dash cam video in the police cruiser was released (Both YouTube videos are below). Watching the trooper power trip is fairly entertaining. Watch him as he attempts, but apparently fails, to arrest the parametric in charge. Aren’t these guys supposed to be on the same side of the law and helping each other?

The moral of the story: Someone definitely needs some anger counseling.

© 2010 StrangeRush.com

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DENVER, Colorado-

Have you ever asked yourself if you would push someone out of the way of a speeding car and risk your own life? I think most people would say yes, but you probably wouldn’t really know for sure until you are in that sort of situation and are able to see how you instinctively react.

Every so often a story circulates about someone who has gone above and beyond and really put their own neck on the line to save someone else. And that is exactly what 58-year-old Jim Moffett of Denver, Colorado did. Reports of the incident state that Mr. Moffett and another man were assisting two elderly women while crossing a street in a snowstorm. A man driving a pickup truck sped toward the four people and Moffett pushed the other three out of the way and was himself hit, sustaining a bleeding brain, broken bones, a dislocated shoulder, and a possible ruptured spleen. After the accident, he was hospitalized in serious but stable condition.

Jim Moffett did two Good Samaritan deeds for the day and should have been applauded for both, especially saving the lives of three other people and nearly dying while doing so. Well, the Colorado State Patrol didn’t quite see it that way. For his troubles they elected to instead give him and the other man citations for jaywalking. A trooper made a statement about the incident saying, despite Moffett’s intentions, jaywalking caused the accident. And I say, “Welcome to Denver, folks, please enjoy your stay.”

And ironically after the Trooper’s statement, and since Moffett was assisting the women while they crossed the street, it sounds like they were the jaywalking instigators, however, they were not cited. Hmmmmmm, Mr. Colorado State Trooper, please explain to us how that logic works?

The moral of the story: I’ve personally never had the desire to give a police officer the finger, but if I were in Mr. Moffett’s shoes I think the urge may arise within me. Is there no love for doing a good deed in Denver?

© 2010 StrangeRush.com

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CHICAGO, Illinois-

At some point in every man’s life he has had dreams and aspirations of becoming a police officer. It’s totally natural. Policeman, fireman, astronaut, professional football player, they’re all part of the natural male cycle of life.

When I first heard about this story I found it to be so utterly crazy and unbelievable that I wanted to save it for as long as I could, but the mood to write it just struck me and my hope is that I can do this wonderfully strange story the justice it’s due. So let’s see what I can make of it.

According to Wikipedia, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has 13,400 sworn officers and is the second largest police force in the entire United States, right after the NYPD. So it is only obvious that with that many officers protecting 237 square miles, the reach of influence of one particular officer is only a couple hundred other officers at most, but more likely 50 or so. Most officers would only know an extremely small portion of the other officers in such a large city. So on a daily basis any given officer could come into contact and potentially work side-by-side with other officers they have never met before.

This is exactly what happened to seven of the Chicago Police Department’s finest. They each had significant contact with a new officer that none of them had ever met. In fact, they had never met him because he wasn’t even a police officer at all, just a guy impersonating one. According to the CPD this is not an altogether too uncommon occurrence. In 2007 there were 20 cases of impersonating an officer, 24 in 2008, and early in 2009 when this story actually happened, only eight.

As the story goes a gentleman entered the South Side Station at 1:30pm through an unlocked door at the rear of the building. He was in uniform and was issued a radio. He then proceeded to ride in a police car, side by side with another ‘real’ officer. During the afternoon the fake officer used the police terminal in the patrol car and participated in five calls, including assisting another officer in handcuffing a suspect. He also drove the police cruiser for two hours during the day.

At 7:37pm, six hours and seven minutes after he illegally entered the police station, he returned at the end of his fake shift. It was then, FINALLY, a supervisor discovered he was not wearing a complete uniform, which included the lack of a firearm. Isn’t a gun required to patrol the streets of any city large or small? How could he have gone unnoticed for six hours without a gun? He was then arrested at 7:40pm for impersonating a peace officer.

At this point you should be shaking your head and wondering how this sort of thing could happen, being dragged out for 6 hours unnoticed? Talk about egg on the CPD’s face, so to speak. Well, I’m not quite done yet. There is one more part that is so unreal, that it trumps the rest of the story.

When these competent police officers arrested the gentleman and went to ID him they discovered he wasn’t even a young man, but merely a 14 year old boy who aspired to be a police officer. Isn’t being observant one of the key traits of being a police officer? Looks like to me quite a few of Chicago’s Finest need to retake their observance class.

Oops!

The moral of the story: If the officer sitting next to you in the patrol car looks like your 8^th grade son’s best friend, odds are he’s cutting history class and his girlfriend is mad because he hasn’t texted her for at least 10 minutes.

© 2009 StrangeRush.com

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PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania-

In April of 1995 Philadelphia attorney H. Beatty Chadwick was ordered to turn over $2.5 million dollars while in a bitter divorce case with his soon to be ex wife, Bobbie. When Chadwick did not turn over the money as ordered he was found to be in contempt of court. Chadwick contended that it was not that he refused to turn over the money, but rather he did not have it anymore because he had lost it in bad investments. The court did not believe him and sentenced Chadwick to prison for the contempt.

Chadwick made repeated attempt to have himself freed and eventually his pleas were heard by Delaware County Judge Joseph Cronin, who determined Chadwick’s continued incarceration was no longer coercing him to turn over the money and therefore the judge declared the imprisonment was no longer legal. There had to be a chance he would turn over the money to keep in him prison any longer and the judge did not believe that chance was there. All the while Chadwick continued to maintain he no longer had it.

On July 10, 2009, at the ripe old age of 73, after 14 long years, H. Beatty Chadwick was finally released from prison. He had served the longest imprisonment on a civil contempt charge in United States history. After his release, Chadwick went on record as saying, “If I had been convicted of murder in the third degree in Pennsylvania, I would have been out in half the time I was in jail for contempt of court.”

The moral of the story: We are raised to believe the United States has the very best judicial system in the world, and for the most part it’s probably true, but sometimes there are some pretty big cracks in that system.

© 2009 StrangeRush.com

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His face and some personal information have been blurred in order to protect his anonymity.

DUBLIN, Ireland-

It took Irish police a long time to catch up to the countries most notorious, habitual traffic offender ever. He was able to effectively elude police, all while racking up 50 traffic offenses. His secret? Police had the 50 tickets for this culprit, but each and every time he had moved to a new address, making it nearly impossible for police to catch up to him (That’s quite an elaborate scheme, moving that frequently he must be rich). And to complicate his preference for a new dwelling, he didn’t even reside in Ireland. So he gets a traffic ticket, returns to his home country, moves, then returns to Ireland again and gets another traffic ticket.

This habitual traffic offender was Polish (Yeah yeah yeah, I can hear all the Polish jokes already starting). So who was this elusive masked man? None other than the infamous Mr. Prawo Jazdy. Never heard of him? Well, neither had I.

Just as Juan translates to John and Roberto to Robert, I’m sure Prawo Jazdy also has an English translation. Let me just say, if I decided to move to Poland and change my name to Mr. Prawo Jazdy, when I returned to America I would be known as……..Mr. Driving License.

Bah-Dum-Bump!!!

(For those of you who didn’t get it like my wife, Prawo Jazdy means Driving License in Polish:-)

The moral of the story: When a cop, it’s probably wise to get acquainted with the various Driver Licenses from nearby countries.

© 2009 StrangeRush.com

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NYC, New York-

I feel a trend beginning here. I just have this feeling that New York is going to be the capital of StrangeRush.com. I could be wrong, but NY sure does seem to come up a lot in my screenings of all the various stories I have yet to write about.

Anyway, we out in the western part of the country really have no idea how effective the meter readers and traffic enforcement officers are in New York City. Take for example this minivan parked below the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway underpass. It was parked and left there for weeks……and for weeks the meter maids and police ticketed the van, really shoving it to the owner once he/she decided to return for their abandoned vehicle. Imagine the amazing revenue the city would collect after numerous tickets over a month’s period of time.

What happened was for four consecutive Mondays, a whole month, the van was ticketed. Finally, it was ordered that the van be towed, and with that tow job the body of George Morales was discovered decomposing, in plain sight, in the back of the van. The body was not covered with a blanket and not hard to see at all. Woo-hoo……high five for the NYC police, way to be on the ball. To top it off it was reported that the window was cracked and the odor was overwhelming. Each ticketer must have had some serious allergies causing their sniffers to not function properly.

The moral of the story: Be observant like they teach you to be in the police academy, you never know what you may discover.

© 2009 StrangeRush.com

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