No matter how hard people try, there's just no running from the law. Unfortuantely for these poor souls, they found that out the hard way.
A Prank Gone Real Wrong
A 911 call from some little kids playing on the phone. The father was asleep and they kept trying to wake him up when the 911 operator asked to speak to an adult. He kept yelling “No! Leave me alone!” Now we have to send someone since we can’t verify there’s no emergency.
Upon arrival, officers ask for ID and the mother has a warrant. Source
A Forgotten Felony
One of my coworkers was a passenger in a car. The car got pulled over for some reason, the driver had a suspended license. The cop asked my Coworker if he had a license to drive the car. Sure did, handed the cop his license. Oops he had a warrant for failure to appear. Source
A Grand Jury Nightmare
USA here. You know those Jury summons you all ignore? WELL. I have a friend who got pulled over something minor. The cops ran his plates and a warrant for popped up… cop apologized while arresting him. Source
Forgot About That One Didn’t Ya Bud
When I was in college a guy called the police to report that his laptop (worth maybe $1000) had been stolen out of his dorm room.
When the police arrived they confiscated some $3000 worth of weed from the guy’s room and arrested him for possession with intent to distribute. Source
0 To 100 Real Quick
Kid gets arrested for shoplifting and the first thing he says to the cop is “I didn’t steal that f—ing car this morning.” The cops originally had zero reason to suspect this kid stole and crashed a car, until he said that. Went from misdemeanor to felony in about 2 minutes. Source
A Nun Chuck Nightmare
I’m not a cop but I recently went to a sheriff training center to take the test to become one. One of the other candidates thought it was a good idea to bring nun chucks. He decided to whip them out and show them off to some deputies who were posted outside the center. He was arrested. One cop walked in and said “if you think it’s a good idea to bring illegal weapons to the cop test then you may as well not even be here today”
I learned nun chucks are illegal in Ca. That day. Source
Breaking The Barrier
Not a cop, heard a great story from one though.
Officer pulled a girl going 15+ over the speed limit on the highway. After she got her ticket and was free to go, the girl tore off, speeding again, and got pulled by another officer a few miles later. Somehow she still didn’t learn her lesson…
…. The third officer to pull her that day arrived at her window nearly crying with laughter, saying “you DO know we have radios right?” Source
Better Off Keeping Your Mouth Shut Kid
Not an officer but my ex-boss’s son got arrested. He didn’t have a license because of a prior driving under the influence of drugs conviction and was on his way to college in Colorado. He was still in Kansas and his mother (who had sworn to boss she would not let him drive) got tired and let him drive. So he goes too fast and gets pulled over. No license, well, that’s trouble. The cop asks permission to search the vehicle and they find pot. He was in an area where simple possession was still a misdemeanor, so still not too bad. Then the cop asks him about his pot use and braindead kid says “Oh officer, I don’t SMOKE it, I just have it so I can sell it when I get to school if I need money.” Instant felony. Source
A Brutal Ending
Military Police here. I was on patrol by myself working a night shift. I get a call on the radio to head to my squadron to pick up a person that would be riding along with me. As I arrive, I noticed that it was the base commander. He wanted to ride along on patrol and get. first hand look at what his enlisted cops had to deal with on a Saturday night in base housing. This sort of thing NEVER happens. You’ll have better odds winning the lottery without playing than for the damn base commander to come out and do this sort of thing. So I pulled up to one of the more famous intersections in the housing area for people running the stop sign. We’re sitting in the car and making small talk when he spots a car that didn’t make a complete stop. He tells me to stop him and find out what their deal is. He approaches the car with me and we begin to talk to the driver. Instantly I smell alcohol emitting from his breath. I begin to say to myself that this guy is the unluckiest man in the military right now to get pulled over by the base commander while driving drunk. After conducting the standardized field sobriety tests on him and seeing how bad he did on them, he begins to break down emotionally. The base commander gets on the phone with this guy’s squadron commander to include everyone in his chain-of-command and have them meet with him in his office in about 30 minutes. I’m putting the cuffs on this guy with another patrol as my backup when the suspect turns to us and tells us that he was set to retire the following month after 24 years of service. Now I don’t know the outcome of this guys situation but I can definitely say it wasn’t good. Source
Well That Backfired
Working in a prison, I met a complete idiot who was in for arson and attempted murder.
This guy was gay and had been living with his new boyfriend. He also had some mental issues and smoked a lot of weed which would make him paranoid. He became convinced that his boyfriend was having an affair with a guy who lived in the apartment across the hall, and one day he was home alone and thought he could hear them having a conversation in there.
He broke in, and found that the guy had just left the TV on. But because he was already in he thought he’d trash the guy’s apartment anyway. He made a mess of the place, then turned the gas on, lined up a bunch of gas canisters and lit a small fire in the dining room.
The fire alarms went off, the building was evacuated and the guy went outside with everyone else to wait for the fire fighters to turn up. He tried to light a cigarette but realised that he had left his lighter back upstairs, so he went back inside to get it. He made it to his floor just as the apartment exploded and one of the gas canisters he’d left in there flew through the door and hit him in the head.
Luckily he’d done a shitty job of trying to cause an explosion. Most of the damage was to his own apartment through a shared wall and the only person he’d managed to injure was himself. His boyfriend was at work and the guy across the hall wasn’t even gay. Source
Never Go There
Not an officer, but a lawyer I know’s client was arrested for sneaking on a military base for Pokemon Go. Source
A Long Jump
My dad was a police officer and one of my favorite stories of his is when he was chasing a guy who ditched his car and took off during a traffic stop. The guy ran about one block, jumped over a concrete barrier and… dropped.
It was a good 20 foot fall down to the freeway and the guy broke his leg. My dad ran over and looked down as the guy crawled to the middle climbed/rolled over between the concrete barriers blocking the two directions. He called down, “That’s a good spot, just hang out there!” and then radioed for his partner to bring the car around.
Overall the guy was fine but my dad said he lived in the area and either panicked and forgot where he was or knew he was jumping that far and thought he would make it. Source
Liar, Liar Leg On Fire
My family is good friends with the local sheriff. He’s told me a story where an officer pulled over a man who was quite obviously under the influence. When he went to the car to talk to the man, he noticed him making a stabbing motion towards his leg.
The man had stabbed himself with a screwdriver and tried to say he’d been stabbed at a bar and was heading to the ER (He was heading out of town, in the direction where the next hospital or clinic was about 45 minutes away) and that’s why his driving was wonky. If he’d been caught with another DUI, he’d have lost his license.
He ended up losing his license anyways, and had a lot of hospital bills to pay. Source
A Forgetful Mind
We’ve had several over the years who have broken into a house or car and then left on foot following a snow storm. No need for a K9 to track them down.
Edit: Also had a guy who had shoplifted and he knew we were looking for him in the mall. We found him hiding in a store and also found the weed he had tried to hide in the pocket of a jacket near where he was hiding. He denied the weed being his until I opened up the paper it was crumpled up in. It was his bond paperwork from the day before where he had been arrested for shoplifting. I took him back in front of the same judge who had released him so he could be arraigned on his new charges. She was not happy with him and revoked his prior bond.
Also had a guy dine and dash, but left his wallet with ID on the table. Source
Some People Just Don’t Learn
I’m one of 2 civilian employees at a PD. We get our regulars, and this guy is one of them. Recently, he got out of jail and decided he was going to go visit his girlfriend that same day. The only problem is, she had a no-contact order out against him. She calls the police and they come to pick him up. He also had some other illegal things on him, so he got taken straight back to jail. He’d only been out for a few hours.
But wait! There’s more! So, his girlfriend has a no-contact order against him, which isn’t like a restraining order where you can’t go within a certain distace of them. It’s literally NO CONTACTING them. Well, this smart guy decides he REALLY wants to talk to his girlfriend, so he called her from jail. 3 times. She called the police again and they went back to the jail and added more charges. Violation of a protective order x4. He was smart enough to violate a protective order while he was in jail. Source