A Cop Dressed As A Shrub Wrote 74 Tickets In Six Hours

Dunellen police caught 74 distracted drivers in just a six-hour window.
An officer spent the sting disguised as a shrub beside a busy road.
His plain-clothed partner wore a shirt reading plainly “Not A Cop”.

Police in Dunellen, New Jersey, are serious about clamping down on distracted driving. In fact, they’re serious enough that late last month one officer spent his shift disguised as a shrub, planted on the roadside to catch motorists thumbing their phones behind the wheel.

The sting ran along the 100 block of North Washington Avenue, a stretch police describe as a busy, pedestrian-heavy slice of downtown. The shrub didn’t work alone. It teamed up with a plain-clothed officer whose T-shirt read “Not A Cop,” and together the pair radioed offenders to colleagues stationed down the road, who handled the actual stops.

Read: Teens Are No Longer Just Texting, They’re Making TikTok Videos While Driving

A Cop Dressed As A Shrub Wrote 74 Tickets In Six Hours — Photos Dunellen Borough Police Department

In just a six-hour window, police issued 74 citations to local drivers, the department said in a Facebook posting (via TheDrive). New Jersey has strict laws against using a mobile phone while driving, claiming that text messaging increases the risk of a crash by 23 times. First-time offenders are fined a minimum of $200 if they’re caught, while those stopped a second time are hit with a $400 minimum fine. Motorists nabbed using a phone while driving for the third time face a $600 minimum fine, three penalty points on their license, and a possible 90-day driver’s license suspension.

How ‘Bout That RAV4 EV

Admittedly, it’s not only the unusual police operation that caught our eye here. Snapped driving along the road where police were stationed was a white, second-generation Toyota RAV4 EV. While the sight of a RAV4 may not sound particularly interesting, the EV model was only built for a couple of years, and just 2,500 examples are thought to have been built.

Fitted with a 41.8 kWh battery pack, the RAV4 EV used an induction motor sourced from Tesla, as the Japanese brand owned a 3 percent stake in the then-EV startup. Toyota paid roughly $50 million to acquire this stake before it sold its shares in 2016, netting approximately $738 million in profits.