A minute or so later, I see in my mirror that the guy is behind me and honking his horn. As I stop to make the turn into my neighborhood, he jumps out of the car and begins telling me that it is illegal to leave the scene of an accident. I tell him that there was no accident, we never made contact. He tells me that I am a liar, and then says that he is a Navy Special Warfare police officer at the Navy base, and he is placing me under arrest. He tells me to turn around a put my hands behind my back. There are a few problems with that statement:
Go read the whole story.
If we have a small advantage over other civilians is that we know (most of the time) what a cop should look like, even in street clothes. That and the notion that we should not ignore our gut when it is singing like a banshee.
I too have joined the OC club for the very same reason.
There was someone doing that around here a few years back. He had lights on his car and was pulling over random people, pretending to be a county sheriff’s deputy. He wound up with a .357 mag shoved up his nose by someone he pulled over, while they waited for the real cops.