The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a litany of problems upon the American public. Outside of just trying to avoid getting sick, there’s rising unemployment, a shortage of necessary supplies and coping with being isolated from friends and family. In Colorado, people now have to worry about being pulled over by fake cops.
NBC News reports that people have been impersonating cops in the cities of Fort Collins and Greely to make sure people are complying with the state’s stay-at-home order. In Fort Collins, a woman reported being pulled over on March 26 by a man in a white van with red and blue lights on the windshield. It was a routine traffic stop in which he checked the woman’s license and registration.
In Greely, numerous incidents were reported of people being sent through a roadblock and questioned about violating “COVID-19 law.” One woman reported being sent to a parking lot that had multiple people wearing yellow vests and cars with red and blue headlights on the dashboard. The problem is, police are not doing these kinds of stops in Colorado.
“Although we are still enforcing transit laws, we are not making transit stops related to COVID-19,” Fort Collins Assistant Police Chief John Feyen said in a statement, NBC reports. “Unfortunately, criminals in this country are taking advantage of this situation in many shapes.”
Of all the foolishness that has emerged during this pandemic, this is definitely up there on the list.
In doing a job no one asked them to do and they aren’t qualified for, the fake cops themselves are violating the stay-at-home order. How are you going to get up in peoples’ faces about the stay-at-home order when you ain’t even following it your damn self? Not to mention that interacting with strangers could expose these impersonators to the virus and potentially spread it to the drivers they’re pulling over.
Life in the time of a pandemic is weird and people are going to develop weird ways to cope with it. Impersonating a cop, though? That shouldn’t be one of them.