Reply #99: Back when I lived in Oregon, I was driving through the town where I lived

[Lydia Leftcoast]

observing the speed limit, in the right lane of the four-lane highway that ran through town.

There is very little traffic.

All of a sudden, there's a cop riding my bumper. It's a bit annoying, but I don't pay any attention, and then he starts flashing his red and blue lights, so I pull over.

He starts yelling at me for not pulling into the left lane when he wanted to speed up.

This made so little sense that I said, "Isn't the person who wants to go faster supposed to take the left lane?"

He just went off on me, yelling and telling me that he'd pull me in for disrespecting an officer if I...what? Kept making sense?

When he stopped for breath, I decided that it was best to take a calm approach: "I'm sorry, officer, I forgot about that rule. It won't happen again."

He calmed down and let me go without issuing a citation.

I asked an attorney of my acquaintance about the incident, and she assured me that there was no such rule and that I was not obligated to pull over for a cop car or any other official vehicle unless it was in blinking lights and siren mode.

She told me that the local cops frequently issued citations for what amounted to "Driving While Hispanic" and that it had happened to the head of the Spanish program at my college. The cops had stopped him and were roughing him up when a passerby pulled over and said, "Hey, do you realize that he teaches at the college?" (i.e. has friends who know the score).

But I heard other stories from that area, including one that was reported on the local news, that a man (with a Latino man) driving with his two small children had been stopped for a traffic violation, had gotten angry at the arresting officers, had been beaten up, and dragged off to jail, leaving the two children screaming in the car. The story failed to say what happened to the children. Did the cops at least call a relative to come and get the children, or were they taken into foster care? That story still bothers me.