Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Police car accident
I was in my Silver Honda Civic, behind the white vehicle that got hit. The lady put on her left turning signal, slowed down, and started to make a left-hand turn. Within about three seconds the following occurred. The white car began to turn left, I looked in my left side-view mirror and saw a speeding police car with its lights on driving on the opposite side of a double-yellow line road, he was about three car-lengths behind me on the opposite side of the road when I looked up from the left side-view mirror and saw the same white vehicle was almost completely perpendicular to make her left hand turn, but she had not yet crossed over the left side of the road. The police vehicle continued to crash into the driver-side door and push the vehicle onto the curb and into a small tree. I did not hear any sirens, nor did I hear any breaks skidding. After both cars came to a stop, I proceeded to pull onto the right side of the road. I just stared at the two cars waiting for someone to do something. After about maybe a minute or two, the officer limped out of his cop car and toward the white vehicle which he had hit. I don't know if he was saying anything, i just saw him looking into the driver window. At this point I got out my cell phone and made a call to 911 and spoke with an operator. I gave them all of my information, plus the officer number. They asked for no license plate numbers, but I did tell them briefly what I had witnessed. They transfered me to some medical emergency department, but the operator (woman) there told me they had already sent out medical help. At that point I assumed that the minute or two the officer spent in his vehicle after the wreck must have been spent calling for help. Another witness in a purple/blue SUV was outside of the car and talking with the officer. That's when I noticed that the lady in the white car was outside of her car and okay. They were all talking, I was still on the other side of the road. The officer who had wrecked into the white vehicle came over to me to get my information. I expected him to ask me what I saw, but instead he looked at my car which was pulled over and said, "I guess you saw me and pulled over and she just didn't see me." I corrected him immediately and told him that I did not even see him until right before he hit the other vehicle, I had not pulled over to the side of the road until after the accident was over. He wrote down my information, but none of what I said about the accident. He walked away. After about five minutes many (about 6 or so) police cars showed up and two medical vehicles. I had to pull my car over into a near-by parking lot so traffic could get through. The officers ended up temperarily cutting off traffic. I decided to approach the scene, and I just stood there standing for about five minutes before a few police officers decided to talk to me. A senior officer (male) asked me what happened, I say senior because he had a gray buzz cut hair style, so he seemed older. After I told him what I saw, he told me to go talk to a COJ guy in yellow, and that he would write down my information and what I had witnessed. I walked over with the senior officer to the guy he was talking about, I proceeded to verify my information the first officer had written on a tiny unofficial pad of paper. He asked me what happened. I started to recall the events, but the guy in yellow was not writing down anything I said. He was just looking at me and nodding. I asked, "why aren't you writing any of this down?" He said, "It's okay, I'll remember." I persisted, "I would really feel better if you would just write all of this down." So he took the small little piece of paper that already had all of my information on it, he turned it over and started to write a few words. I just kept telling him what I saw, he stopped writing. I didn't ask again. But later when I was leaving, I approached that same senior officer and told him that no one had written down what I saw. I told him I even told the guy in yellow to write it down, and that the guy in yellow had a pen and paper and he still wouldn't. The senior officer said it was okay, and that he had a pretty good idea about what had happened and that the guy in yellow was still in training, as if not writing down the report was not really important. I started to leave, but then I went back over to the original lady who was driving the white vehicle and gave her my information and told her that no one was writing down my story on any paper, and they were only writing down my information on unofficial small pieces of paper. She wrote down my information. I started to leave again, but then I remembered that when I was just standing around the first time, the officer that had hit the white vehicle was telling us what had happened and he mentioned that he had slammed on his breaks as hard as he could and that his airbag never went off. I did not see any skid marks on the road and I had not heard any breaks at the time of the accident. I walked over one more time and told the lady that had been hit that I had not heard any breaks and that the officer was saying that he slammed on his breaks as hard as he could. Not only that, but there were no skid marks and I did not see any break lights during the accident. The lady was taking pictures of the front of her car at the time I told her this. She said she was going to take pictures of the road to show that there were absolutely no skid marks. As I was leaving, the same senior officer asked if there was anything else he could do for me. I said, "yeah, can you take a picture of all the skid marks on the road." He said CERTAINLY (or something to that effect). And was just looking at me in the eyes. I said, "but there aren't any." He then proceeded to tell me how the officer has the lawful right to speed on the opposite side of a double-yellow road with his lights on. He said there was nothing the officer could have done to miss the lady, and perhaps the officer thought he had slammed his breaks. He then recalled a story about how he hit an innocent driver too and how he got his facts mixed up. If anything, that just proves that the story of officer who got in the wreck today is not credible. I then left to go to my internship and immediately started to write this witness testimony down. It was about 10:35am when I started to write this, it is now about 11:20. The accident happened at about 10:00am. I know this because I was going to my internship two blocks away and I had looked at the clock. I will now post this on a blog so that it may be time stamped for official purposes. 11:25AM (I've noticed this blog time stamps three hours back sometimes)
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