[Steve Dallas]

I'd like to preface this with the fact that I respect LEO's, and any time I've ever been pulled over I follow the officers directions and treat them with respect.

That being said, back in the early 80's I had an incident that happened where I was definately being hassled because of the car type and my age. There are cops out there that do abuse their power...fortunately I've only experienced that once in my life.

I bought my first car in college back in 1983. It was a 73 Dodge Charger SE, and had a 383 when I bought it. I left college and moved to California. I drove there down I5, experiencing a breakdown north of Redding when a fuel pump went out. A California Highway Patrol officer helped push my car with his car to a repair shop. While I had my drivers door open and we were talking, he noticed a metal pipe, about 2 feet long, between the seat and the door. This was there when I bought the car, and was meant for protection. He said that I should put the pipe on the back seat in plain sight, which I did. Once he pushed me to the repair shop, I slept in my car there overnight. Because I was bored, I wandered around the Repair Shop yard...there were license plates scattered all over the ground. I was young, I was in college and I figured no one was using one of these, and it'd make a cool wall decoration...so I took one and put it in the trunk.

Fast forward to about 2 weeks later after I had arrived in Los Angeles. I was driving in downtown L.A. to a job, and it was early and there was NO traffic. The street I was driving on had 2 lanes in each direction. There were no other cars around me except for a non-descript car that started tailgating me. I was doing the speed limit, and this idiot was close enough that I couldn't see his headlights and most of his hood in my rear view mirror. I would guess he was 3-5 feet from my bumper.

The speed limit was 35, and I was doing that. I slowed down to 25, sped up to 40, slowed down again...all the while, this car was locked on my rear bumper. I finally slowed down to about 10 miles per hour, and the car finally changed lanes to the left lane and started to go by me. As he got side by side to me, I flipped him off. The passenger pulled out a badge, and pointed to pull over, which I did right away.

I had Washington State plates, and hadn't changed my license to a California one, nor re-registered the car yet. I had pulled into an empty parking lot, and got out of the car to talk to the cops, explaining that I was sorry to have flipped them off, but they had been tailgating. I gave them my drivers license and registration, and they proceeded to look in the windows of the car, seeing the pipe on the back seat.

I was super cooperative with them and even opened the trunk for them when they asked without any backtalk and being very polite at that point. They saw a license plate...and at that point, proceeded to arrest me for 2 things. First, I had a weapon (the pipe) in the car, in the back seat. Second was suspicion of car theft.

I was taken to L.A. City Jail, and spent about 4 hours there until I was bailed out.

I was never ticketed for anything, and no charges were ever filed. I did file a complaint, and during the investigation by IA, I was apparently being tailgated because "my gas cap was off" (which it wasn't), and they wanted to "warn" me about it (something they never told me when I was pulled over.

During the ride to the jail, the cops (which were undercover) were driving along a street with hookers, and were catcalling when they passed.

It ended up that the two officers were suspended for a short period of time because of this and my complaint to the department about it.