We’ve all daydreamed at one time or another about being able to flick on a set of police lights to instantly clear a path through a gnarly traffic jam, or maybe even to scare the bejeezus out of a driver who’s just cut us up. But one driver in Illinois didn’t stop at daydreaming and is in custody after driving around in a pair of modified vehicles that look rather too much like real cop cars.
The Millstadt Police Department teamed up with the Illinois Secretary of State Police to investigate reports of a local driver cruising around town in a Ford Explorer and Chevrolet Impala, each painted black and equipped with certain features designed to make them resemble official police vehicles. The Explorer had a bullbar on the front, basic steel wheels, a loudspeaker, and an A-pillar-mounted spotlight, while the Impala was also running on steelies, had an A-pillar spotlight, rear CB ariels, flashing lights at the top of the windshield, and a ‘police interceptor’ badge on the trunk lid.
And while the driver might have been able to persuade police that at least some of those mods were just a bit of fun and entirely legal, the license plate on each car bearing the text ‘pursuit vehicle, police interceptor’ and ‘IP’ (for Illinois Police), plus a star with the damning wording ‘Illinois State Police’ is going to be harder to wriggle out of.
Related: Teen BMW Driver Pretending To Be A Cop Pulled Over A Real Off-Duty Police Officer
Images: Millstadt Police Department
The Millstadt PD’s Facebook post announcing the man’s arrest only says he is ‘in the process of facing charges’ and stops short of alleging he tried to pass himself off as an officer by using the lights and pulling members of the public to the side of the road. But the police have asked anyone in the area to contact them if they believe he did stop them or did anything to represent himself as an officer.
And if he did, he certainly wouldn’t be the first. We’ve written a couple of different posts within the last year or so about fake cops who got nasty shocks when the drivers they pulled over turned out to be real police officers. Last December a California teen was arrested for handing out fake parking tickets in an attempt to scam drivers in Santa Cruz.