Hit and Run Detection Kit

Sometimes, simple little offenses really get under my skin and piss me off enough that I go to great lengths to see that the responsible party gets his/her just dues.

A while back I took a hit-and-run accident report in a crappy part of town. It was obvious that the blue car parked all crazy behind the white victim car was the responsible vehicle. There was blue transfer paint on the victim car, the damage location on the victim car was consistent with damage on the blue car, and the blue car appeared to have been parked by a decidedly intoxicated person.

I contact the owner of the blue car by phone and set up a time to come talk to her in person. When I get there, she doesn't answer the door. Further phone conversations produce no results. She's always too busy or not home or whatever. So, one day I just show up at her apartment door. Her kid opens the door, but I can see her peeking around the corner from the doorway of another room.

I get her out in the hallway and begin questioning her about the accident. She admits she had been driving on the night in question, but denies she hit the other car. I then produce my homemade hit-and-run detection kit, which I had put together the night before.

The hit-and-run detection kit consisted of two clear plastic zip-lock bags, each with a Q-tip inside, and with a bunch of nonsense numbers and letters written on the outside. I hold up the bags in front of her and say:

"OK, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to take swabs of the blue paint on your car and the blue transfer paint on the other car. I'm going to send these swabs to the boys in the lab (I actually said "the boys in the lab"!). And if they come back as a match, which I believe they will, you're going to have way more problems than you're going to have if you just admit what happened."

Her response? "OK, I did it."

I wrote as many tickets as I could, and informed the owner of the victim car so she could get her damaged vehicle fixed.

I felt really good about that for a long time.