Officer Cynical Fails to Make a Friend

I stop this guy for speeding in a residential neighborhood. This is an area where the residents have complained about speeders, so we spend a little extra time there as a deterrent.

Officer Cynical: "I'm stopping you because you were speeding. We've had a lot of complaints about it in this neighborhood, so we're cracking down."

Mr. Witepauer: "I was only doing about 32."

Officer Cynical: "Actually, you were doing 36, according to my radar, and the limit's 25."

Mr. Witepauer: "I was looking right at my speedometer; I was going 32."

Officer Cynical: "I'm not going to argue with you. You can take the citation to court, if you feel it isn't fair."

Mr. Witepauer: "It's amazing to me that these tickets always just happen to be for 11 over the limit."

Officer Cynical: "What do you mean?"

Mr. Witepauer: "I've had like 10 speeding tickets. And every time I get one, it just happens to be for 11 over."

Officer Cynical: "Yes, that is peculiar."

I go back to my squad car and write the ticket. When I return to his car and start my spiel about how to take care of it, he starts giving me the rapid-finger-flexing-gimme-gimme-gimme hand gesture to indicate I should hurry up and give him the citation, and going "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" while I'm trying to talk. Finally:

Officer Cynical: "Hey! You gonna listen to what I have to say or not?"

Mr. Witepauer: "Look, I get it. You're giving me a ticket for speeding and you want me to sign it. Give it to me and I'll sign it. I'm in a hurry."

Officer Cynical: (begins spiel over again from the beginning)

Mr. Whitepauer: "C'mon, man! I'm hungry and want to go home."

Officer Cynical: "I just don't want you to say later you didn't understand your options of how to take care of this."

Mr. Whitepauer: (quickly signs ticket) "I'm contesting this in court. It just doesn't make any sense that it's always 11 over."

Officer Cynical: "Yeah, well, drive carefully and have a nice day."

He takes off, but a block away he pulls over in a "No Parking" zone, gets out, and flags me down.

Mr. Witepauer: "You didn't give me my license back."

Officer Cynical: "If you'd've let me finish talking, you'd know it's in the payment envelope I gave you."

Mr. Witepauer: (starts fishing around in the envelope)

Officer Cynical: "And you're illegally parked. If you don't move, I'm writing you a parking ticket."

Mr. Witepauer: (gets back in car, slams door, angrily drives off)

Win!