We’ve all seen videos of someone calling for police to report what they consider is egregious behavior, then when the police show up, the police arrest the caller. As caught by Fox 10 Phoenix, recent events in Nebraska prove yet again that anyone requesting the long arm of the law should be crystal clear about who’s really breaking the law. Lancaster County, NE sits in the southeast of the state and includes the state capital of Lincoln. A man driving on Highway 77 through the county called 911 to report a wrong-way driver in the opposing lane. The caller told the 911 operator about the other car, “He had his brights on, man. He almost ran me off the road… That was gnarly. That was like, a lot.”
Video shows an officer with the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Department on Highway 77 trying to track down the wrong-way driver, eventually spotting a silver Subaru doing just what had been alleged by whoever called 911. The officer flipped on his lights and crossed the median to pull the Subie over. When the officer asked the driver, “Do you know why I pulled you over,” the driver answered, “Yeah, because I was on the wrong side of the road.” When the sheriff’s deputy asks, “Is there a reason for that?”, the man responded. “No. I must have missed an exit.”
Then the deputy asks the Subie driver if he’s the one who called 911. Skipping any attempt to litigate the case there on the median, thankfully, the driver answered, “Yep, because I thought someone was on the wrong side of the f–king road, bro.”
One of the most intriguing things about the video is that audio from the 911 call demonstrates how clear the Subie driver was about relevant details. He explains to the 911 operator not only that he’s headed northbound on 77, but that he’s “in the east lane” while the wrong-way driver was “in the west lane.” On top of that, the officer’s dash cam shows the wrong-way Subie driver passing two more vehicles while driving the wrong way. He was lucid enough to call in the coordinates for the strike, but too muddled to realize he was his own target. That’s what can happen when your blood alcohol concentration level is more than twice the legal limit, as was found after the driver was tested.
The best thing about the video is that, no matter how it happened, the driver got himself off the road before anyone got hurt.
