To Those in Blue by Konnie Enos

With all the talk about cops in the news of late, I’ve recently been thinking about all the times I’ve been in a car when a cop pulled us over and it clearly wasn’t for speeding.

In the two specific situations I’m thinking of I was the one adult passenger in a clearly full vehicle and there were obviously multiple carseats involved.

The first time my sister was driving her eight passenger station wagon and between our own kids and my nieces, which I was tending, we had every seat full. Yes, you counted that right. That means we had six kids in the car and I think the oldest ones were five or six at the time.

Bonnie could not figure out why she was stopped because she hadn’t been speeding. As I recall the officer just wanted to make sure we had all six of those kids properly strapped in and then commended her for being a safe driver.

Several years later my husband and I were taking our kids to my brother’s house in a state with a primary seat belt law. Our car had exactly six seat belts, which was a good thing because at the time we had four kids. We had our youngest in a large forward facing carseat and the next youngest in a booster seat, while our second born was sandwiched between them. Our oldest was in the front middle seat.

When the officer stopped us my husband wondered if he had light out or something.

I looked at the petite nine year old between us and wondered if that was the problem while I felt for her seatbelt.

The officer came to the window and pretty much the first thing he said was he stopped us because we weren’t all strapped in.

I hooked my thumb on our daughter’s belt, proving to him that we were all strapped in while saying the car was indeed a six passenger.

He profusely apologized for stopping us.

I told him he was doing his job and to keep up the good work.

As we continued on our way I remember commenting on the fact that there we in fact seven people in our car since I was very pregnant with our youngest. I also added we’d were going to have to deal with the car situation soon because we were about to outgrow the one we had.

I can’t remember if the first cop did so, but I do remember the second one apologizing to me for doing his job. As I look at all these news stories about police officers that we see today I have to wonder how many times an officer feels the need to apologize for doing his job.

I have been stopped a few times in my life and a couple of times I was at fault. (One time I was actually speeding, but in my defense I hadn’t realized what the posted speed limit was.) But I’ve never been mad at an officer for doing his job and I don’t see why they should apologize to me for doing so. Even if it means they have to give me a ticket.

I truly love it that one time when a driver not only broke the law by going straight in a turn only lane but then cut in front of me because obviously the lane they were in ended only to be pulled over by the cop who was in the lane on the other side of me.

Police officers everywhere, keep up the good work.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.