Pull Over And Get Out Of The Car

Yes, those are the words I heard from our local police yesterday.

Ok, it was a driver’s license checkpoint, but still! I heard those words!

For real – have you ever heard of any city that does driver’s license checkpoints? In the afternoon? This is the second one I’ve been stopped for in Lorain.

They block off a couple of side streets to impede your running away, they post officers on a couple of other side streets to stop traffic and they block about two blocks in total on the main street which just happened to be the same street I live on, not two blocks up. They had most of the length of the park marked as the check point with at least 30 cruisers sitting there waiting to chase down someone who saw the checkpoint and then tried to avoid it.

When it was my turn for the officer to walk up to my car, I was polite, with my hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, window rolled all the way down. When asked for my license, I explained it was in my laptop bag which was behind the driver’s seat. I asked him if I could get out of the car to get it. That’s when he told me to "pull over and get out of the car"!! See? I didn’t lie!

So, I was directed to pull over onto the grass in the park where I had four officers close by watching me take my laptop bag off of the floor of the car. Duh, do I really look like a gun toting crazy person? On second thought, don’t answer that!

One of the officers came closer, took a good look at my license, the one with the horrible picture, and said I was free to go.

I guess I got off easier than the guy that was parked next to me on the grass. The driver was nowhere to be seen and the tow truck was there hooking up to his car. Sucked to be him.