Photo by soleil1016.

“Remember when that guy purposely hit me with his car, and then tried to run away but got caught?” That’s how the best story we’ve read all day begins.

Blogger A Girl and her Bike was involved in an altercation with a driver in February. Riding a Capital Bikeshare ride, the story’s heroine was bumped from behind by a car at the intersection of 13th and Kenyon Streets NW in Columbia Heights — not once, but twice — and heard laughing coming from the car while another driver called the driver an “asshole.”

Of course, the driver didn’t realize that A Girl and her Bike was also An Off-Duty Cop and her Bike:

So I stopped. Pulled out my police badge (yes, I’m a cop if you didn’t know before. No I really don’t want to talk about it, thanks) showed it to the driver and motioned him to stay right where he was.

And that’s when he panicked.

Before I get any further, let me explain something to you about a police badge. It doesn’t grant you super powers. It’s simply a piece of tin embedded with a number. It’s not magical. It will not stop bullets. It will not make people do what you want. It will not make you win a fight. I have plenty of friends that always seem to think that because I’m a police officer, I am impervious to assault, robbery & bullets and that I never, ever have to worry about these things. This is not true. If anything, I am more vulnerable. Because instead of just being your average girl, I’m a threat. I live in the fear that should I ever be the victim of a robbery, the criminals will discover my badge and decide they can’t risk me living and kill me. This actually happened to a friend of mine who was shot during a robbery when they saw his badge. He lived to talk about it, thankfully–but its a very real and very possible fear.

And that’s pretty much what happened here. Instead of seeing a harmless Girl on a Bicycle that he could bully with his car, he suddenly saw someone that was a threat to him. And why was I a threat? Because this upstanding citizen of the District of Columbia makes his living selling illegal drugs, which is more than likely what he was doing that particular night (you will see how I know this a bit later in the story).

All I heard was “Oh shit” come out of his mouth, and the sound of squealing tires as he and his friends desperately tried to run away.

At that point, it only gets better, and is a fine story about a cyclist trying to deal with a jerkwad driver, but also an amazing first-person account of the challenges good cops face in the justice system. Go, read. We’ll still be here when you get back.