This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: The Props Never Work
Part of my job is watching people try to outsmart a system that has seen every trick before. On a DUI file it might be a breath machine. On the road it might be a camera, a plate reader, or a live police officer. This week I found three people who decided the answer was a prop. One built himself a fake passenger, one built himself a disappearing licence plate, and one built himself an entire fake police officer. In all three cases the prop was the very thing that gave them away.
A quick reminder before the curtain goes up. None of this is as clever as it looks, and in British Columbia most of it is illegal in its own right. Cheating an HOV lane, hiding your plate from enforcement, and pretending to be a police officer are each their own problem, on top of whatever you were trying to hide in the first place. Impaired driving still runs underneath a couple of these stories too, which is the part I care about most. With that said, let us meet the cast.
The Passenger With No Face
Our first story comes from Hayward, California, where a driver wanted the carpool lane without the inconvenience of a carpool. So he brought a mannequin. California Highway Patrol officers stopped the vehicle after noticing what looked like a dummy propped up in the passenger seat, positioned to make it appear the car carried more than one occupant.
The CHP noted that the mannequin was missing one important detail. It had no face. That is a bold thing to drive past a highway patrol officer and expect to work. The driver was cited, and the CHP offered the public a line I could not improve on, which is that the people in an HOV lane are supposed to be actual people, and not, in their words, your arts and crafts project.
I appreciate the ambition here. Building a passenger is more effort than simply leaving five minutes earlier. But a faceless figure staring straight ahead is not a person, and pretending it is turns a small shortcut into a citation and a story the officers will tell for the rest of the month. In British Columbia our HOV lanes run on the same honour system, and drivers have tried the same stunt here to skip the occupancy rule. It does not work here either.
The Licence Plate That Vanished
Our second story is from Arizona, and this one had a gadget. Department of Public Safety troopers had already dealt with this driver twice, because he had a habit of fleeing at high speed. What made him hard to pin down was a device that hid his licence plate with the push of a button. No plate, no easy identification, at least in theory.
The theory did not survive contact with reality. Troopers recognized the vehicle on patrol, tried to stop it, and watched it take off again at speeds over 130 miles per hour. This time one trooper guessed where the driver was heading, got to the neighbourhood first, and set up. When the stop finally happened, the driver jumped out, ran to his house, and barricaded himself inside. He nearly came out peacefully, thought better of it, tried to bolt back in, and was arrested on the doorstep. He now faces charges for the earlier flights, for this one, and for criminal speeding, reckless driving, and driving under the influence.
Here is the flaw in the button. A hidden plate makes you more memorable, not less. Troopers did not need to read the plate, because they already knew the car, the driver, and the pattern. The gadget that was supposed to make him anonymous had turned him into the one vehicle every trooper in the area was watching for. In British Columbia, a device that obscures your plate is not a loophole. It is its own offence under the Motor Vehicle Act, and it invites exactly the attention it is meant to avoid.
The Fake Cop Who Picked the Wrong Car
Our third story is the best one, and it comes from Silver Spring, Maryland. In the early hours of a June morning, a man in a privately owned Ford Taurus pulled up behind another car, switched on a set of red and blue emergency lights, and tried to conduct a traffic stop. He got out wearing a holster, ready to play the part.
There was one problem. The car he had chosen to pull over was an unmarked police cruiser, and the person inside it was a real Montgomery County detective on a plainclothes enforcement detail. Of all the vehicles on the road that night, he had selected the single one guaranteed to end his performance immediately. When the detective lit up the cruiser’s actual emergency equipment, the man’s story shifted. He said he was working security nearby, then claimed to be an active deputy with another county’s sheriff’s office, then a retired officer from yet another department. Melvin Andrew Pinkney Jr., 42, was charged with impersonating a peace officer and released on bond, and investigators asked anyone else he may have pulled over to come forward.
This one lands squarely in criminal territory, and not just in Maryland. In Canada, impersonating a peace officer is an offence under the Criminal Code, and the reason is obvious. A fake traffic stop is frightening and dangerous, and it relies entirely on the victim believing the props. The lights, the holster, and the confident approach all work right up until the moment the audience turns out to be a professional. He built a convincing show and then performed it for the one person in the county who knew every line.
The Takeaway
There is a thread running through all three, and it is not really about mannequins, gadgets, or costumes. It is about the belief that the right prop can replace the truth. A dummy can be a passenger, a button can erase a plate, a set of lights can make you an officer. In every case the prop did the opposite of its job. The faceless passenger drew the eye. The vanishing plate made the car unforgettable. The fake cruiser found the real one.
The lesson, as always on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays, is that the systems these people were trying to beat are patient and they are experienced. In my world it is the impaired driving investigation that people try to prop their way out of, with a story, a distraction, or a device, and it rarely goes better than it did for these three. The truth is stubborn. It does not need a costume.
See you next week, and leave the mannequin at home.
