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I pulled over a guy for not wearing his seat belt. He didn’t forget to put it on; he quite intentionally was not wearing it. Because
you know, the nanny state can’t tell him how to live his life. I mean, seatbelts are a great thing but he can be exempt if he chooses
to, that’s his choice, he doesn’t have to follow that damn law, and his first words to me, when I told him that I had stopped him
for not buckling up: “I didn’t know city cops could enforce that law.” He said it in the tone of “why I believe you are overstepping
your authority here officer.” Now, in case you dropped out of the same elementary school that this guy did and your educational
level about the law is the same, lemme assure you that yes, city cops can enforce any and all state traffic laws. That’s why cops
are sometimes called “law enforcement officers”, you know?

Some kind of a verbal dispute in a parking lot went down; two strangers had got into an argument and the police were called.
One guy left the scene just prior to our arrival. Still there is the other guy and his wife. The wife explained to the other officer
and myself what had happened, but we were quite distracted by her husband who kept trying to take up a tactical stance behind
us, body offset and angled, causing us some mild alarm; we had to keep directing him to just stand in front of us like a normal
person. Wife explained to us that he used to be a police officer and can’t help himself. “You’re doing it again!” she yelled at him
trying to get him out of cop mode. She said he had been a cop for 8 years. The way she phrased it made me suspect he had been
fired. Probably because he was a dick. As evidenced by him tactically squaring off against us; he should have godamn well known
that was completely unecessary and would cause us significant concern.

Dark and cold December morning. A distraught woman is sitting in my patrol car in the passenger seat. She had just, quite
unintentionally, run over a pedestrian and killed her. The pedestrian had darted out into traffic; with her hoody up over her
head so she either didn’t see the car coming at her or she had thought the driver would see her and stop. She was wrong on both
counts. It was clearly not the driver’s fault, which I kept telling her as she was crying and shaking.