SALT LAKE COUNTY — A woman was driving on Interstate 15 between Draper and Murray around 2 a.m. early Friday morning when she thought she was getting pulled over.
“They were just really aggressively driving," said Tori. "And they started flashing these green and blue lights that looked like cop lights.”
Seeing green, she thought it couldn’t be a real police officer.
She continued for miles on northbound I-15 while the silver pickup truck continued flashing the lights, and even cut in front of her and eventually forced her to stop in the middle of an intersection in West Jordan.
“He pulled in front of me and blocked the whole road and got out of the car, and he started yelling at me," said Tori. "It looked like he was wearing a Spirit Halloween cop costume. Like, it was not an official-looking police uniform.”
Tori got on the phone with 911, which soon scared the “fake cop” away, she said.
Sgt. Melody Cutler with the Unified Police Department said pretending to be an officer is a misdemeanor, punishable by jail time.
“Unfortunately, I've seen it way too many times in my career," she said. "It does happen. We have people that want to be police officers, and so for whatever reason, they're not hired by an agency, so they just feel this need to go out and do these things. It can range to somebody who's actually a predator out looking for victims.”
Cutler advised that if you suspect a fake cop might be following you, call 911; dispatchers can verify immediately if it’s a real officer.
“We have enough issues with public trust as it is that we don't need people out there who are not police officers causing us even more issues," she said.
Maybe the “fake cop” thought he was pulling a funny Halloween prank, but Tori was scared for her life.
“Having somebody follow you for that long and aggressively and closely — I was shaking," she said.
