Police Encounter Number One
The first time was warm Sunday morning and toward the end of a 14 mile run and on the 4 lane section of road. As we are cold weather runners, warm weather is particularly hard on us. Near the end, an older policeman (I believe he was a sergeant) turned on his lights. Being the only male in the group and the son of a politician, I agreed to speak with him.
He began easy enough and stated, “There is a law which requires you to be single file”
I responded “Yes Sir”, and before I tell what I said next, a little background is necessary.
We are fortunate that our town, has 5 roads which intersect the metroparks. At the time, there was no sidewalks on any of them. I had been lobbying the city council for some time to add sidewalks to easily travel the one mile distance to the metroparks. I would see families driving with their bikes on bike racks to the park to go riding.
For this reason, my answer was something similar to, “Yes Sir, I understand, but it would be nice if we had some sidewalks”
I am a nice guy but what he said next really put me into orbit.
In the most sarcastic voice imaginable, he stated, “Well we don’t have any, do we?”
As I mentioned, I am nice guy but when he said this I had had enough and after 14 miles of hot weather running, I wasn’t in the mood to put up with smart-aleck remarks.
So I retorted, “Put some in!!!”
I waited to a response and while I knew he wanted to say something, there was no response forthcoming. What I did see was an officer that was moving in his seat, face turning red, and hands gripping the wheel tighter. He was upset and I believe he was particularly upset as he couldn’t respond to me. So I rejoined my group and we started off. We were in single file with the middle runner being a little out so as not to trip each other.
He again pulled up next to us and screamed “I said single file!!!”
“We are” I yelled back.
Shortly we arrived at an intersection and as we were turning east, the light was green and we proceeded. Our friend from the police was stopped by the perpendicular red light and thought we had crossed through the red light and again turned on his flashers. We simply ran on and he shortly realized his mistake.
Now I have the most respect for police officers and appreciate every day the job they do. That day I simply crossed the line after being a little tired. I have re-told this story many times and once a friend asked why after being such as smart-ass, I hadn’t been arrested. After a minute of thought I simply shrugged my shoulders and said, “Probably the only reason I wasn’t arrested is that I smelled too bad and the he didn’t want me in his car”.
Police encounter Number 2:
This was on another Sunday morning run out to the metro parks. Sure enough a policeman pulled up and this time spoke politely to please run in a single file. Fortunately it was a different police officer and we agreed and kept running.
I need to mention, as we are each professionals and parents as soon as any car is in the area we do run single file. I felt we were being harassed and knew this second occurrence would not be the end of it. I contacted a couple of media outlets and a few had interest in a story.
I also checked the city ordnances to make sure there is an ordnance requiring runners to run single file. Much to my chagrin there is such an ordnance in our town. To go further I had an attorney friend look into Ohio statutes and found in Ohio runners can not run on interstates and some other information. Runners in many states don’t have too many rights.
I had done my home work and the next time I would be ready. I wanted a ticket.
Police Encounter Number 3:
This was started innocent enough and on our way to the metro parks, a green pickup truck, slowed down moved toward us. She moved close to us, so close that she crossed the white line on the side of the road and forced us into the gravel and grass off the edge of the road. When she was right next to us, she sped up. As this normally happens when there is another car on the other side of the road, I assumed there was car in the other lane and she was simply moving over to be safe from the other vehicle. I turned to look and unbelievably, there was no other cars on the road. It seemed that this driver didn’t like runners.
So in my ornery way, I turned around and let her know she was number 1, in a most ungentlemanly way. The other runners and I ran on talking about how dangerous cars and trucks are to runners.
Sure enough a mile or two down the road, we get pulled over by a police officer who had his lights flashing and the officer was upset. He said we weren’t single file and I started to argue. The officer was argumentative and upset so I knew this wasn’t just about us not running single file, so I asked, “Sir what is this about?”
To which he responded “You flipped off my wife….”
At this point I couldn’t help but to laugh, which didn’t help matters. And he yelled, “do you want a ticket?”
As I had already alerted the media, I responded, “Yes”.
This threw him off and he asked for some id. I obviously didn’t have any.
The other runners started lobbying for me not to get a ticket. I had not forewarned them that I wanted one. He agreed to let me go. Not before he started trying to get us riled up by talking about sensitive issues in our town. We ran on.
While I stated we have been pulled over 3 times, this is not the end of the story. As I mentioned my father was Mayor and I know the Mayor of our town and was going to call him and complain. However I thought it was better to start with the Police Chief. So I called him.
He kept me on hold for about 10 minutes (thank goodness for speaker phones) and finally picked up.
We talked for a while and as he used to be a runner it was a pretty light hearted conversation. I let him know we didn’t like being pulled over and he stated there had been complaints by doctors, attorneys and other professionals that we were slowing down traffic. I didn’t challenge him on this but as we run with doctors, attorneys and other professional, and know most are rather accommodating to a 3 to 5 second delay which might be caused by runners.
I told him I understood that we sometimes might slow down traffic and we do the best we can to avoid that. But then I asked about those drivers which intentionally slow down and swerve toward the runners.
In his biggest voice he said, “I want to know about those individuals”
A small smile came over me and I asked, “are you sure?”
He responded, “Yes !!!”
“Okay… there is a woman that works in the police department (I found this out after later) and she drives a green pick up truck and she is married to officer XX.” There was a pause
“There is no officer XX”, he responded,
I asked him to check again.
He then said “Oh”, followed by another pregnant pause.
He quickly ended the phone call and I knew Sunday was going to be an interesting run.
Sure enough on the 1 mile of road to the metro parks, we had 4 police officers pass us and stare at us, but to their credit, none pulled us over. It’s been four years of running since that phone call and I can happily report, we have not been pulled over since.
I guess the moral of the story is, if you’re feeling harassed by the police, other drivers or any group or individuals; stand up for your rights and keep your fingers crossed… Runners have a right to the road when there are no sidewalks or bikepaths.
Good luck and be safe in your running….
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