My mom recently told me she saw 7 police cars with one car stopped. I was recently a “Police Officer Applicant” with Fairfax County (I live over by Ft. Belvoir) so I will try and give some info on this. Once you make a stop, you radio it in, and any cars in the vacinity will come over for backup. A lot of times you’ll see just two cars which is enough in my opinion. Four cars, I agree sounds like over-kill, but the other responding cars probably did not know who else was going to respond for backup, and in this case there were 3 cars in close enough proximity to respond, so you end up with 4 cars total. Personally I would think that if you already see 3 cars there, they probably have the situation under control and you can go about your patrol. You could even pull up and ask if they need any help (which they probably don’t) if you really wanted to check. Also, when responding they were most likely not told “Lanky teen” but only that it was a stop for supposed drunken driving. If you’ve ever seen Cops or any of those chase videos, you can see that alcohol has differing affects on people. Some are as calm and nice as could be, while others are extremely belligerent and violent. It would also help to have multiple units standing by if the person tried to run on foot (some could follow in their car) or take off in their vehicle, by having more than 2 cars you could possibly attempt a rolling road block and bring the suspect to a stop safely without endangering other motorists. But as you say, it could just be a slow night. These people are working at times 11 hour shifts which can be very boring and lonely (which is the reason you’ll see two cars parked next to each other where patrol areas abut to chat for a while) and I can certainly understand that they at the very least want to see what’s going on, and see if they can be of some help (like I said, they probably don’t know who else is responding).
Chris - 09 03 03 - 12:52

I once had fuzz congestion. You know, when you get too much lint down your throat. I hate fuzz congestion.
Frank - 11 03 03 - 10:02