My personal favorite story, and the only time I've been pulled over that is actually interesting, goes like this:

One night at about 2 a.m. I was leaving Matt's apartment (this was before we lived together). Matt lived in Towson and I lived in Fells Point, about a twenty-five minute drive. I was going about 60 miles per hour down I-83 when I see the tell-tale flashing lights in my rear view mirror. I pull over and realize that I do not have my license. I pull my registration out of my glove box and roll down my window.

The police officer comes up to me and says, "Are you aware you have a headlight out?" I was aware. It had been out for about two months. But I tell him, "Yes I didn't notice until I turned on my headlights about ten minutes ago." He says he's going to have to write me a repair order, and asks for my license and registration.

Now, let me break into the story to tell you a little bit about my history with police officers. My father is a retired Maryland state trooper. Because of that I grew up with respect, but not fear, for police officers. I think that attitude has helped me out in several situations when I've been pulled over. I'm rarely nervous, although I do show them proper respect. Due to that, despite the fact that I've been pulled over on multiple occassions, I usually just pull away with a warning. I have friends who give officers attitude, like how DARE they pull them over? I also have male friends who claim that I don't get tickets because I'm a girl, but I believe it's mostly in the way that I treat the officers.

Anyway.

I gave this officer nothing but respect, and he was extremely hostile to me from the get-go. When I told him I didn't have my license, he WENT off on me. Yelling about how I could have stolen this car, how he should drag my ass down to the police station. It was all very bizarre. Especially since I know he could just look up my name in his car computer and see a picture of my drivers license. He says to me, "do you have any ID that might show you're the same person whose name is on the registration?" I say no, because my entire wallet is at my house, which by the way is only two miles from here so if you'd like to follow me home, be my guest. Well, he lectures me some more about how he thinks I probably stole this car. It was so so weird, but I actually started to get scared that I might be arrested. If you even get arrested for a felony at my old job they have to suspend your security clearance, no matter if you're guilty. The officer tells me that he's going to go run my information to determine if, in fact, I'm a criminal.

He goes back to his car and is there for at least twenty minutes. Finally he comes back, and this is where it gets really weird.

He tells me that he needs me to step out of the car. When I ask him why, he yells at me to just do it. So I get out and he brings me around to the back of the car. He tells me that because I don't have my ID he's going to need to take my photograph for his file. It sounded like total bullshit to me, but this guy was a police officer, so I did what he told me. There I was, standing in front of my car with the cop car's flood lights shining on me while this jack ass of a police officer takes a polaroid of me. It was SO weird.

After that he just let me go. He didn't even write me a repair order. He just told me to get my headlight fixed and always carry my ID. So I drove home, feeling extremely, extremely strange. I felt violated in some way that I couldn't even explain.

The next day I called my father and asked him if, back when he used to work the streets, if he ever took anyone's picture because they didn't have their ID. He had no idea what I was talking about, so I told him what happened. He was stumped. He said he didn't necessarily think it was illegal to take my photo, but he had never heard of anything like that. He joked that maybe the guy took pictures of all the girls he pulled over and had a huge collage in his basement at home. That did not comfort me, even though he thought it was funny.

Since then I've been wary of police officers. Not that I've had many run-ins with them, but it just creeps me out that they can pretty much do whatever they want and because good, law-abiding people don't question it, nothing happens to them.