Mistakes or Confidence not new...
One ploy used around here - again. Is to simply watch for elderly at grocery stores, drug stores, banks. Often just wait to see whom is parked in handicapped. Also the expectant mother parking.
Follow home. Any idiot can go to Thrift store and buy a brownish uniform, or any number of pants, shirts to appear to be delivery or utility person.
Folks getting robbed. This is not rocket science and not a new thing.
Pretending to be LEO. Hey, get a blue light, follow some good looking lady from the grocery store, secluded road, hit the blues and you too can be a blue light rapist. We and other areas had to change not only how unmarked cars were used [marked in a way] and ladies especially were educated.
I mean folks were NOT pulling over for being in fear. That had to be addressed.
Some of this is not original, just re-surfaces or makes a comeback.
A long time ago I got a phone call from the alarm company, an alarm was going off. In the wee hours off I go and arrive. There is NO alarm going off. None of what is supposed to happen or usually took place did.
I was followed and then 2 cars gave chase. I was doing 125 mph down a wide street and literally slid into the police station parking lot standing on the horn.
One seasoned officer, was way back there with lights on... I mean I was clocked doing this in a 40mph zone at 2:30 am- he caught up and about the time my butt was about to get yelled at. An officer who ran out stopped him and explained - an APB for the cars chasing me was issued.
I know how they were not found...btw.
Thank goodness some folks were on duty that knew me...of course back then nobody cared I was carrying concealed. Granted nobody addressed this until I had been the station for a bit. I stayed the night in a detectives office and slept there...or tried to.
I never ever left my abode without calling the alarm company again,and I had to hear a certain password. One I changed often and other arrangements.
I have been pulled over and why? My vehicle matched description of one used in a robbery or somesuch.
More than once,and out of state. The worst, when an LEO had been shot. I mean when the units converge, you stop, you get out and hug the ground, you get a gun removed off body and that 870 muzzle is at the nape of your neck, you do not breathe wrong. you get slammed into a squad car and taken in.
Finally it gets straightened out. One never forgets the feel of a 870 muzzle on nape of neck and it is being racked - never.
One never knows. Prepare oneself for whatever.
The scariest thing a LEO does, to me, is pull someone over. I was riding along...I stayed put, and it made me uncomfortable.
I prefer to not do Us vs Them. I mean just who is Us and who is them? Most folks do the LEO and civilians.
You got Moral and the UnMoral. I mean one cannot tell always from the Roster.
I've been taken for something I was not. So has persons whom wore a uniform.
That raccoon that gets into trash at 3am may be cute and cudly - might be rabid. Slugs work.
Oleg - IMO - is simply stating what we all state on THR. Tools for task, biggest one being the brain.