Lots of drivers in the U.S. have military seals or decals on their vehicles, often to show support for a particular service branch that they or a relative is associated with.
I've also heard of journalists and PIs using vehicles that look like undercover/unmarked police cars to get access to areas that might otherwise be off-limits to civilians - they sometimes get waved through perimeters or won't be ticketed/towed if they park in restricted areas.
Could this be someone showing support for Chinese police with over-the-top decals? Or was the driver actively pretending to be a Chinese police officer or is a police officer claiming some right to operate outside of China? The article didn't make the circumstances clear, other than the car obviously has the markings and seals.
ETA: Just remembered another odd situation/use case for fake police cars - as art or performance props. The UK band/art collective I used to work for, The KLF, featured a 1968 Ford Galaxy police cruiser in many of their videos, with the lights and paint intact but modifications to the seal and motto (using "To Serve and Protect" and the band's Pyramid Blaster logo). You can see a picture of it on the back of some of their 45s (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctorin%27_the_Tardis) and I know they drove it around London for the 3 A.M. Eternal video.
> They recalled an incident earlier this summer wherein another Asian driver with Chinese markings on his car was arrested following an attempt to pull over an off-duty police officer.
Is this some kind of weird role-playing fantasy? Who in their right mind would expect not to be identified as a fraud, impersonating an officer in the wrong country?
Possibly. In high school there were a couple of guys who liked to cosplay police officers and dress their cars up. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to pull people over.
An eponymous law, probably named after a Robert J. Hanlon, it is a philosophical razor which suggests a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for human behavior.
Inspired by Occam's razor, the aphorism became known in this form and under this name by the Jargon File, a glossary of computer programmer slang. Later that same year, the Jargon File editors noted lack of knowledge about the term's derivation and the existence of a similar epigram by William James. In 1996, the Jargon File entry on Hanlon's Razor noted the existence of a similar quotation in Robert A. Heinlein's novella Logic of Empire (1941), with speculation that Hanlon's Razor might be a corruption of "Heinlein's Razor".
In 2001, Quentin Stafford-Fraser published two blog entries citing e-mails from Joseph E. Bigler explaining that the quotation originally came from Robert J. Hanlon of Scranton, Pennsylvania, as a submission (credited in print) for a book compilation of various jokes related to Murphy's law published in Arthur Bloch's Murphy's Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! (1980). Subsequently, in 2002, the Jargon File entry noted the same.
Earlier attributions to the idea go back to at least the 18th century. A more concise expression of the idea comes from Jane West, in her novel The Loyalists (1812). A similar quote is also misattributed to Napoleon.
>Could this be someone showing support for Chinese police with over-the-top decals? Or was the driver actively pretending to be a Chinese police officer or is a police officer claiming some right to operate outside of China? The article didn't make the circumstances clear, other than the car obviously has the markings and seals.
Looks like they have to prove intent. If they were just driving around that sounds hard to prove. Especially if their defense is "it just looks cool" or something.
I'm not a lawyer, so I wonder if there's some standard of per se intent that I don't know about.
I've also heard of journalists and PIs using vehicles that look like undercover/unmarked police cars to get access to areas that might otherwise be off-limits to civilians - they sometimes get waved through perimeters or won't be ticketed/towed if they park in restricted areas.
In some states this is actually codified.
In New York and New Jersey, if you are a member of the press working in the New York City metro (and verified by the state), you can get license plates with NYP on them for "New York Press." I don't know if Connecticut does it, too.
>I've also heard of journalists and PIs using vehicles that look like undercover police cars to get access to areas that might otherwise be off-limits to civilians
Never, ever, ever, ever buy a similar make/model and color car of any common current police car. People will drive SO SLOW in front of you because as soon as they see you in their mirror they think you're an unmarked car. grumbles and is glad a lot of the departments here are switching to SUVs the past couple of years. When I first bought my 2013 Impala (in late '13 when they were the common cruiser here), I'd have people in front of me actually let off the gas and drop 10-15mph when I'd get behind them on the interstate eye twitch. It doesn't help that every department has unmarked vehicles here (and have over the years) including Camaros, Toyota and Ford pickup trucks, Escalades, Corvettes, the same made and model of their rest of the fleet, etc. They'eve even used semis to get tickets over the past several years [1]
There is a used car lot by my work that ONLY sells used police cars, they've been there for at least 20 years, and I just don't know why people would go buy them. Most of them still have spotlights on them, the only way I can rationalize people buying them is that they buy them WANTING people to think they are law enforcement.
> There is a used car lot by my work that ONLY sells used police cars, they've been there for at least 20 years, and I just don't know why people would go buy them.
Sometimes it's the whole "role playing" thing.
But sometimes - depending on the make/model/etc - it's to get the cop car performance package. As long as the car hasn't been beat to hell, it's a cheap way to get a nice upgrade on what is usually otherwise a low-tier/grandma kind of car.
The Ford Crown Vic with the Interceptor package was one of the "go-to" upgrade kind of cars. Horrible gas mileage. But if you got one with the upgraded gas tank (with racing bladder installed - because they had issues exploding in fiery death when rear ended - ala Pinto) - plus all the rest - it was supposedly one helluva vehicle to drive. And cheap because ugly and used.
While you could do something similar with some other car (ie - LS1 a Honda Civic or something like that) - you would end up spending way, way more money on everything needed to do such an upgrade (also - the CV was rear-wheel drive, which is rare to non-existent in sedans).
Yeah but with the used police cars, you might have relatively low mileage (compared to the lifespan of the car) but you might have tens of thousands of hours of curb miles with it just sitting there idling 8+ hours a day 5+ days a week.
I'd personally never buy one, they seem like they'd end up being a money pit with the only benefit being cheap OEM parts because they're common fleet vehicles.
Most of them in that silver but a handful of black unmarked ones and the rest being marked cars. I actually saw someone pulled over by one of the unmarked ones on the way to work today, they've been having some of them follow behind the school buses to nail people that try to blow by the bus stop signs.
Fun fact most police cruiser SUV models come with no roof rack rails as they would get in the way of the light bar. However this also includes the unmarked ones making them easy to identify at a glance.
Ya, this would never pass for a real police car in China. It’s a black Audi, the official car of choice...it wouldn’t be degraded with any decals at all. Those are the kinds of markings you on a Volkswagen or Hyundai.
YouTuber who lives in China actually made a video about the incident - he claims it was likely to intimidate Chinese nationals in a densely Chinese settled area of Irvine CA
Note that these vehicles are apparently not just driving around, but actually trying to pull people over!?
> They recalled an incident earlier this summer wherein another Asian driver with Chinese markings on his car was arrested following an attempt to pull over an off-duty police officer.
I remember that happening to a pizza joint in the 90's. It was called something like "Pizza 911" and delivered in a vehicle made to resemble a patrol vehicle.
I’d be really surprised if the Chinese “secret police” drive around with an array of plushies on the passenger side dash. However neglecting motor vehicle law is very typical in Irvine in my experience.
Yeah. I mean, impersonating US police might actually get you somewhere. But Chinese police? I get pulled over by someone pretending to be Chinese police, and I'm going to tell them to get lost.
Unless (as tomcam says) these are actual Chinese police, blatantly here in the US, trying to tell dissidents "even here we can get to you".
If tomcam is right that these are actually Chinese secret police. If so, and you're some random person with a gun, reaching for it might be a very bad idea. (Even if the Chinese secret policeman doesn't have a gun, it could still be a very bad idea.)
This just highlights the absurdity of the situation. The real Chinese police would know that attempting to operate this way is just going to get them shot.
100% this is a case of dumb kids decorating their cars.
Doesn’t the CHP know a real black Audi police car in China would have no markings at all? This is the car of choice for the higher end CPC police, who are neither in uniform (well, the typical MIB uniform) nor would their car be so easily identified.
Heck, one way to avoid getting pulled over by the police in Beijing is to drive around in a black Audi. They’ll automatically think you are some kind of big wig who they shouldn’t mess with (unless by other black Audi driving police).
Sure, I didn’t mean that in serious way, just that this wouldn’t have been mistaken for a real cop car in China. How would the CHP know that, surely they wouldn’t.
It’s just so obviously fake in a tuhao way, like seeing POLICE printed on a Porsche or something.
i wonder what that guy's (at least it was a guy behind the wheel when i saw the car on the road once, and the car had the police style color scheme and that text from rear bumper repeated on the sides too) experience has been https://uptownalmanac.com/2010/01/meanwhile-mountain-view
A scary thought I had was of the actual Chinese police coordinating with CHP and California DAs to crack down on this sort of thing, under threat of Tencent pulling its money out of Hollywood or something.
This tactic is also being used in Australia. These men are Chinese secret police here on tourist visas, harassing the families of prominent Hong Kong demonstrators.
EDIT: that was incendiary and almost certainly incorrect. As others have pointed out, the Chinese police are much smarter about this kind of thing. It’s much more likely to be dumb teenagers.
If this is true, it's pretty egregious of the Chinese state to be so blatantly interfering in the affairs of American residents. I mean, if you're going to harass HK supporters, do so ... clandestinely?
I'll bet $50 it's a Chinese student / new immigrant who put this on as a joke. It's like some American drivers got fake European plates for their Mercedes. Yeah, it's stupid, but hardly something one goes to jail for.
And some guy tried to pull over a police officer? Either he's dumb beyond belief, or more likely the officer mistook him for actual police.
I walked by Harvard on my way to work every day last year (didn't work at Harvard but nearby). I'd commonly see expensive german cars with Chinese symbols spray painted on them in gold spray paint.
It turned out this was a common "joke" international students from China would play on each other. Sometimes between couples who were dating according to a friend who was able to translate the spray painted language. It's disgusting.
I've also heard of journalists and PIs using vehicles that look like undercover/unmarked police cars to get access to areas that might otherwise be off-limits to civilians - they sometimes get waved through perimeters or won't be ticketed/towed if they park in restricted areas.
Could this be someone showing support for Chinese police with over-the-top decals? Or was the driver actively pretending to be a Chinese police officer or is a police officer claiming some right to operate outside of China? The article didn't make the circumstances clear, other than the car obviously has the markings and seals.
ETA: Just remembered another odd situation/use case for fake police cars - as art or performance props. The UK band/art collective I used to work for, The KLF, featured a 1968 Ford Galaxy police cruiser in many of their videos, with the lights and paint intact but modifications to the seal and motto (using "To Serve and Protect" and the band's Pyramid Blaster logo). You can see a picture of it on the back of some of their 45s (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctorin%27_the_Tardis) and I know they drove it around London for the 3 A.M. Eternal video.
And in the Boston area there are owners of old Ford LTDs with Boston Police logos from the 1980s and 1990s which are used as movie props (see https://www.universalhub.com/2018/old-boston-police-cruisers...).