I was commuting to work yesterday morning and found myself in the rightmost lane of a three lane surface street highway (19/41). In my rearview mirror I suddenly spot three police cars lit up in the left lane. No sirens or anything, just lights. Since I was over on the right and they didn’t seem to be heading right for me I let a few folks in but otherwise kept going. Shortly after I was at a red light.

The police, by now, had spread across all three lanes, and one of them had just pulled out behind me, but several car lengths back with nobody between us. “Crap,” I thought, looking for a place to move right to let him through. But after a moment I realized that he’d stopped… all three of them had, blocking all three lanes. What the hell?

The door of the cop car behind me opened but nobody got out. Luckily, I had my sunroof vent open, so I could hear what happened next over the loudspeaker.

“YOU, IN THE LEXUS.” There was an older, powder blue Lexus SUV in the center lane, a little behind me. “PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.”

Oh hell this is gonna be good.

“TURN OFF YOUR VEHICLE KEEPYOURHANDSINTHEAIR! STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLE AND FACE FORWARD. NOW WALK BACKWARDS TOWARDS ME” etc., you get the idea. About the time they’d actually have been slapping handcuffs on him the light turned green. 

Haven’t seen anything in the news so I have no idea what was up, but it was an interesting start to the day, at least.