jasonlamberton

Jason's Ruminations

rumination. n. The act of pondering; meditation.

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I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it. A laughing police officer in full uniform and cap, sitting on a patrol car hood while moving at least 25 mph (without wearing his seat belt, I should say), with sirens a-blazin, running stop signs. Even more unbeliveable was the fact that I had my new camera that I got for Christmas handy (thanks, Mom and Dad!) and was able to grab it, turn it on and squeeze off some shots before this incident disappeared into the dustbin of history's denials. Evidence, evidence, now we have solid photo evidence of the general attitude and morale of the D.C. police force, one of which is a lackluster vigor to protect and serve its citizens. In fact, they already have Deaf blood on their hands. I'll get to that later.

(closeup of cop car-surfer from first picture)

Here's the pictures. Luckily, my camera was in multi-burst mode in which you just squeeze and hold the shutter and it takes pictures every second. I didn't have time to set anything up, just to turn the camera on before the cars whoosed by.

It happened last Sunday, January 15th, at 4:58 pm. I was doing several experiments at the same time, as I customarily do, and was on a break, relaxing in the hammock and looking outside the window, pondering the progress of the experiments, looking at the birds when flashes of red and blue caught my eye. Cop car sirens about 2 blocks away, at I and 8th streets, NE. I saw like three or four patrol cars converged, which you see on almost a daily basis as a District resident. After that was totally unexpected. I was doing some experiments with a prism when I noticed the siren light reflections on the wall moving, so I moved to the window and saw the cop sitting on the hood of the patrol car, laughing. That's when I snapped the photos.

*Reporters are trying to get ahold of me. There's a news truck hovering outside, a camera trying to get a shot of me through the window and I keep on getting calls, so I will finish this after I deal with all the mushrooming attention this has gotten! Washington Post, NBC, DC Examiner, etc is really following up on this. So, more on this later!*

6 Comments:

rachy said...: whoo!! beautifully busted. :); 1/18/2006 05:49:10 PM
Anonymous said...: Nothing in DC will surpise me, you know. DC will have a hot issue with police scandals for long time as San Francisco and Oakland are toiling through this problem now and spent millions in legal issues and investigation bills. DC will be much more poorer. Good luck DC residents.; 1/18/2006 05:50:31 PM
Anonymous said...: this is a copy of what I sent nbc 4 about your story

If you look at the pictures and use a basic formula (V=S*1.466) Or velocity = speed times 1.466(a constant), you will be able to determine his speed. You can see in the pictures that the car moves about 2ish car lengths. 2001 Crown Vic's are 212 inches long or 17.66 feet, so the two car lengths are 35.32 feet. He states that he calculated they were going 27 miles an hour over the posted speed limit of 25, which would be 52mph. So take 52mph*1.466 which equals 76.232 feet per second.

So the car at 52 mph will move at 76.232 feet per second. In the pictures he took the car moves about 35.32 feet, which would mean that the pictures would have to be taken about 0.46332 seconds apart from each other, which is highly unlikely given that his camera was in his pocket. Then he had to focus and capture the picture and then do it all again. I am ashamed that you would take a witness's speed that is way out of the realm of accuracy and use it on your channel, without some sort of cooberation. I for one am knowledgeable in the accident investigation field and would love to know how this "MATH WIZ" came up with 52mph.

It might have not been the officers best decision to ride on the hood to get from one place to another but in no way were they traveling at 52mph.

I hope you will ammend the information and make sure that you don't forward the information in-correctly to other affiliates.; 1/18/2006 10:22:25 PM
Mike McConnell said...: Good job, Jason.; 1/19/2006 11:03:34 AM
Capt. Jack Sparrow said...: Not surprising. I hoped to become a D.C. police officer in '99 or so. When I took the physical (obstacle course) and written exams, I couldn't help but notice the exams were a freakshow practically. I wouldn't want to trust any of my fellow exam-takers with my life, so I bowed out despite doing well on the exams.; 1/20/2006 10:12:59 AM
HomeImprovementNinja said...: Congratulations! That's awesome that the TV news picked up on your story.; 1/20/2006 11:33:42 AM

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Jason's Ruminations

Monday, January 16, 2006

Car-Surfing D.C. Cops

6 Comments: