A Blue Light Special on Aisle 405

Got home late last night from another coveted business trip and was very quickly treated to a traditional L.A. welcome. We were driving home on the 405 from the Long Beach airport. I’d pulled an all-nighter and was a little punchy, so Stacy was at the wheel, hugging her traditional right lane and the kids were chatting it up in their car seats behind us, a little juiced at being able to stay up so late. Traffic was heavy for late on a Sunday night, but moving along. Suddenly as if from nowhere an LAPD cruiser, lights pounding, whipped across four lanes of traffic to be inches off our port bow, corrected, blew past the car one lane to the left, then executed a brilliant 4-lane slalom to put him back in the carpool lane. For another mile or so we were able to watch him thread traffic like he was bouncing off moguls. After that we continued our drive a little more serenely until we rounded a corner five minutes later and saw lots of red brake lights and, off on the shoulder, the familiar visual thump-thump-thump of blue cop lights - a veritable optical subwoofer. We approached the scene and traffic slowed to a crawl as we pulled along side our old cruiser friend, who seemed to have brought along some additional workmates. That's when we noticed these guys weren't on a routine your-tail-light-is-out sort of traffic stop. About six or seven cops were all out of their cars, kneeling behind open doors with weapons trained on a white SUV being spotlighted ahead. There were a bunch of arms sticking hands-up out of the windows of the SUV.  It was (in retrospect) amusing to note that as each of the parade of 405 drivers in the right lane got to the same relative spot, like carts in a Disneyland ride, each driver suddenly realized what was going on and their car would jiggle around a bit as they scrambled to figure out how the **** to get the **** out of there.

We discussed the matter the rest of the way home. L, who did not have anywhere near the visceral reaction her parents did and thought it all quite academic, was quite curious why the cops had guns. Not so much specifically in this case, but in the abstract, as if it were a surprise that they should possess them.

"They need them to fight the bad people," we explained. There really are bad people out there?, she wondered aloud, not particularly worried about it, but just taking a mental note to store away for future reference.

Then N made an insightful comment. "That's why we don't want any car bumps!"