The other day I saw a police car with its lights flashing, but the police were sitting in the car calmly, waiting at a red light. As those of you who have been here a while have surely noticed this is pretty common. I grew up in a country where flashing lights meant that the police were rushing to the scene of a crime, a nearby car was about to be pulled over, or some other urgent business was being attended to. I thought I’d capture the scene on video with my phone as an example of this practice but a policeman on a motorcycle that was following the police car took that as his cue to stop me for questioning. Such questioning is supposed to be reserved for situations when criminal activity is suspected. The policemen said I was allowed to record video of police cars on the street so, though I was able to continue on my way after a few minutes, I didn’t appreciate being treated like a potential criminal and being asked all kinds of personal questions. The video I took wasn’t very good but this one from YouTube is a bit better and gives a pretty good idea of how the lights are used.
The idea seems to be that the flashing lights encourages people near the car to be on their best behavior. I can’t help think, however, that the “little boy who cried wolf” story applies in this case. As people become habituated to the lights I suspect they become less likely to go out of their way to make room for passing police cars just because they see lights flashing. This argument didn’t impress the young police office who stopped me, however. He seemed to be entirely convinced that the practice was just fine regardless of what a silly foreigner like me might think.
Posted by Kirk
