I would never tell this, if I were not already retired from my police department, but here goes.
I was working lasar radar on a road near Opryland. I had been at this location for about 40 minutes issuing speeding tickets to drivers in violation. Instead of pulling speeding drivers over to the side of the road, I would run them down and stop them on the side of the road. To me, this was a much safer method of stopping a speeding automobile, rather than jump out in front of the vehicle and motioning for them to pull to the curb.
This one vehicle, I had clocked at 72 mph in a 45 mph zone had me on its tail for a traffic stop. Inside the vehicle was a middle age woman. She gave me no problem, but asked if she could see the lasar radar unit I had clocked her with. The Supreme Court has ruled that this is not mandantory to do, but she was nice, so I went back to my police car and let her she her flashing speed on the lasar radar unit. She said okay and I explained the traffic citation to her. She signed the citation and left. Going back to my police car, I could not find the lasar radar unit. Then I remembered showing it to this driver and I laid it on top of her automobile and she was gone and so was this $5,000 dollars lasar radar unit! Did I panic? No, I almost peeed in my pants. I took out after her vehicle, but she was gone! About 20 minutes later, I received a message to call a motorcyle officer. He wanted me to know that he located my missing lasar radar unit on the side of the road, some 15 miles away. I met with him and the unit was broken. It apparently fell off the top of her vehicle and hit the pavement, breaking it. There was no way I could cover myself from such a tragic incident. I took the unit into my precinct and explained the situation to my Lieutenant. We sat down discussed payment of the unit’s repairs. Damages and repairing of the unit would be about $500.00 dollars. I sat there for a few minutes and then I brought out 52 speeding citations that I had written that day, with this unit. I gave the citations to my lieutenant and stated, “these citations should more than pay for the repair of the broken lasar radar unit”. He looked at me, he looked at the radar unit and stated “you made a costly error in placing the unit on top of the speeders vehicle. But, luckily these units are covered by insurance”.
Yes, this was a costly mistake by be. I would like to go back to that day and that traffic stop and correct the mistake I made.
Needles to say, I did not do that again.