A couple driving in Ohio with two kids in the back seat on Saturday noticed they were being chased by a Chevrolet Tahoe so closely, it nearly hit them. Then the Chevy started flashing blue lights. But instead of pulling over, the couple grew suspicious.
"I was like, that's not a cop," Adam Hollon told WHIO. "So I just kept on going."
Turns out, his suspicions were right.
After the couple called 911, police arrested Dennis Meade — a 52-year-old gentleman from California who had impersonated a cop in the past — after finding "two sets of handcuffs, traffic cones, a neon yellow vest and jacket, road flares, a New York Police Department patch, and reflective blue tape so his doors would shine blue at night" in his car.
"I mean, his windows, he's got wheels like the cop cars, he's got the spotlight. He's got the PA, the radios, the sirens," Hollon told reporters. "He's got it all." Or had it all, that is, until he landed himself in jail.
From WHIO:
Overholtz, in the incident report, wrote that he assumed the driver was a retired law enforcement officer of some sort because the car had a light bar on top, a thin blue line flag on the hatch of the tailgate and a license plate that featured a large blue logo that read, "Concerns of Police Survivors" with "C.O.P.S" written on it.
The officer later discovered that Meade had a pistol with a round in the chamber and a loaded magazine in his pocket and was not a police officer or affiliated with a law enforcement entity. …
Monday night, Meade remained in the Montgomery County Jail on a misdemeanor charge of impersonating a police officer or private police officer. The charge accuses him of trying to force a car carrying a family of four from Franklin off the road at state Route 741 in Miamisburg on June 15. Meade then activated his overhead lights and tried to stop the same car on I-75 South near Austin Boulevard.
Meade has admitted to police that he activated his lights to try and get the car to pull over but he would not say why.
See video for more details below, posted by WHIO.
Previously: Criminal gang operated fake police station down the road from a real one
