Years ago when I was working as a residential appraiser (I work in commercial now, so I no longer drive around residential neighborhoods), I had to take a picture of a home that recently sold. I saw that there were no people around the home, so I just slowed down a bit as I was driving by, reached my arm out of the window, and took a picture.

As I am driving away, this car starts driving up on me really fast. He starts tailgating me and flashing his headlights like he wants me to pull over. I probably should have just ignored it and kept driving, though there was no way I could outrun his car in my beater, and he may have just done something crazy enough like force me off the road.

I pull over so he can come talk. I only rolled down the window about one centimeter, because his body language suggested that he would like to reach in my car to grab me and pull me out.

He pulls out a badge and shows me that he works for the local police department, but he was off duty that day or something. He says he caught me casing his house for a robbery and proceeds to tell me that it’s illegal to take pictures of a house (it’s not).

I tell him exactly what I was doing. He tells me in an expletive-laden threat that he better not catch me in the area again or he will go after me.

I am on the side of police officers, because they have a difficult and stressful job, but the moral of the story is that if you are of a certain personality type that gets riled up very easily over nothing, maybe you shouldn’t consider law enforcement as a career.