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Has any cop ever stopped you while you had long hair and if so what did they indicate their reasons were?
I got stopped on a "Routine Check" a couple of times. whatever that is.
Dude...
Tampa Bay must just not be the friendliest place for longhairs. I've been stopped for cruising down the beach (Gandy Beach) with my longhair flowing out the window, just for looking suspicious??? WTF??? Of course after the cop checked my license and found nothing to hold me for, he was very curt about telling me to move along!
Hey don't you know that all us long hairs are Drug Lords and terrorists? KEEP ON GROWING!
Not true. I'm a hired hitman myself.
Depends where you are. if you want to get anywhere financially speaking around this area you have to look like a Yuppie type with real short hair and it probably isn't worth your while since the pay rate sucks down here anyhow. what pays $75k elsewhere pays around $25-30k here.
also, it's not that cheap to live here anymore anyway.
Haven't you noticed an overabundence of law enforcement personnel in the Tampabay area?
hell, even when I was out in Colorado Springs and surrounding area for three weeks I only saw a cop car one time!
also, I seemed to detect a higher ratio of Long haired Men per capita there, but maybe that's just my perception.
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Oh yah . . . was out looking at retirement property to buy in East Texas a few years ago (near Pittsburg, I think) in Titus County. Was toodling along a 2 lane road at the posted speed limit (45) as is my custom . . . was a nice spring day, had the window rolled down on my little Geo Metro, hair flowing in the breeze. Drove past a sherrif's deputy parked on the side of the road, who then started up and followed me . . . this turkey stayed right up on my rear bumper. I stayed at 45 mph, and after a couple miles of this, he flashed his bubblegum lights, and pulled me over.
He asked me all sorts of questions--where was I from, where had I been, where was I going, why was I there, did I have any drugs in the car, etc. Oh yeah, he asked why I was going so slow, and I said the posted speed limit was 45, so I wasn't gonna go any faster, especially with him on my ass.
He asked if he could search my car. I figured I could tell him to get a warrant, but (1) I didn't want to piss him off and (2) I really didn't want to wait for all that crap, so I said, "Sure," and let him look. He pulled out an old hand-held CB radio, and said, "Didn't you know monitors are illegal?" I said, "It's just a CB, and it doesn't work, anyway." "Oh," he said, and poked around a bit more. He didn't find anything, and he wrote me an official warning, didn't specify any particular offense, and he let me go. I continued on at 45 mph (he turned around and went back), and have never been back in that area since, and never intend to return ever again--not only for being pulled over for "Driving With Long Hair," but for a lot of other reasons . . .
Anyway, that's my story . . . I'd recommend that y'all stick to the interstates when driving through East Texas . . .
--Tock
Yes, it's certainly unfair, but imagine how black people feel. At least you can cut your hair and eliminate the risk of looking "suspicious."
How does having Long hair make someone suspicious?
please explain this for In Europe we didn't have this problem.
In the U.S., there is a stereotype that long haired men are trouble makers. Some, usually older people it seems to me, generalize longhairs as drug users, criminals, and lazy. The list goes on to include many other negative descriptions. And, of course, no group of people can be accurately stereotyped, not a specific gender, nor ethnic background; not a religion or sexual preference.
Well, I take some of that back: stereotypes of politicians are true.
Of course you can stereotype them! Remember, gays are good at clothes and stage design, lesbians have short hair, we Pagans have to carry sacrificial knives to slaughter innocent children, the Satanists always have to be ready to torch a church or eat babies (so I guess they're always hungry), the Muslims are on the lookout for places to blow themselves up at, and the Jews are prepared to take over the world and remove pork from existance (hope THAT happens with the pork, at least. Yuk) and squeeze the Gentile teat till blood comes out, and then more so! Also, the black people are looking for innocent people to rob or rape, etc.
Just shows us that it's a hard hard world for a Southern US white man! *lol* Thankfully I'm not in the US! *So* glad that Canada's a salad bowl instead of a melting pot....we don't get lots of that 'profiling' like you hear about in the US...
Gotta differ. Every time my partner and I go to Canada, we get searched for guns. Americans never see it, but every Canadian we know will say, "Yeah, you guys look like HUNTERS!" We must look like some characters they saw on CBC when they were little.
When we were in Munich we heard some English spoken a table over from us in a beer hall. It turned out to be two kids from Toronto, guys also glad to have someone to speak English with. The first thing they asked was, "You guys come over to Europe to HUNT?" We really laughed, being from a western state with lots of wilderness. Why would anyone even think that we'd go to Germany to hunt?
Later all the earlier hassles at Canadian border crossings sank in. And since then, every time we go north, we just brace ourselves. We know the gun questions will be coming. Canadian border guards just have a really hard time believing that two guys who look like us don't have any GUNS!
Maybe, it's because the U.S. has become a nation of guns! By the way, the killings that we hear about in the U.S. are usually not committed with hunting guns. They are sometimes committed with pistols that are used for "protection." Maybe, we have regressed to the cowboy mentality.
The Germans wouldn't think so. Remember, the guys from Canada thought that you were going to hunt!
Also, in Mexico, they only allow those with guns for hunting! It seems that they are aware of the rootin'-tootin'-shootin' problem that goes on in the U.S. For example, in Texas, there is a sign warning you not to pack your pistol when you leave the Wild-West town of El Paso to go to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico.
This is what it was like being a long-haired rocker traveling in a band in Texas in the early 80s. Interesting story overall, and the point is well made.
I noticed that our right tail light was out during a gas stop and mentioned to my comrades that the cops were probably gonna pull us over. Sure enough, just as we get back on the road, I see the all-too familiar red lights spinning in the rearview mirror. Thankfully, our band was smart enough to keep the drugs off the road (hotels were a different story), or so I thought. "Okay guys", I calmly asked as I began pulling over, "I know I've asked this before, but does anyone have anything at all in this van?" Ken sheepishly grins as says, "Well, I've got a bit of pot in the glove compartment!" Suddenly, images of my new prison boyfriend snuggling up next to me in the bunk bed sends a cold chill through my body.
The police car door opens and out pops Sheriff Texas Badass, complete with ten-gallon cowboy hat, aviation shades, long-sleeved shirt that barely covered his enormous gut and a toothpick hanging from his sun-baked lips. "Step out of the car!" he barked. He threw Ken and I against his car's hood and hollered, "Here's the deal. My name's Roscoe P Justice. I'm the head of the local narcotics division. I pulled you boys over for a busted tail light, but I"m just here for your drugs." He glared at us and said, "You tell me right now what you've got and we'll work something out. Otherwise, I'm calling my friends out here and we're gonna have ourselves a good ol' time. More images of prison love flash in my mind.
Suddenly, Ken says, "Well Joe, since you seem like a man of your word, I'll play fair. We've got some pot in the van." Boom! On go the cuffs. He goes through the glove box and pulls out a Ziploc bag of pot. He calmly opens the bag, dumps it out, unlocks our handcuffs and drawls, "Okay boys, get on outta here." Our eyes pop open in amazement over our good fortune. Mr Texas Badass Cop notices our shock, laughs and says, "Aw hell, I'm in a good mood today. But if I ever catch you again, I will kill you." He hung on to that word "kill" for a good ten seconds. He jumped back in his car and drove off.
Two hours later we're clocked doing 96 in a 55. Things are looking bleak as the Texas State Trooper asks Ken to "step out of the car, son." After asking me to get out of the car and show my license, the officer goes back to his car and there's this long, unexplained pause. When the narcotics and K-9 units show up ten minutes later, we know why. The narcotics guy pulls us aside while the convinced-he's-soon-to-be-arresting-officer searches the car for all the copious amounts of drugs we don't have.
"Whatever drugs y'all got, you should tell me now before I get the dogs 'cause I'm willing to work with y'all if you cooperate," he says.
"We don't have any drugs, we're just late getting to our gig and we were-"
"Musicians!" he says. "Hell, son, I used to book country bands down in San Angelo - what kind of music y'all play?"
By this point, the car-searching guy has got to our cartons of cassettes in the back. He looks at our tape, looks at my license and says with that I-might-be-tellin'-the-boys-down-at-the-bar-I-met-a-celebrity face: "Hey, that's you!" Shortly thereafter, after Ken furiously sirs and y'alls the officers some more for good measure, we are told in a slightly embarrassed tone that there will be no speeding ticket and all six officers leave, each with a brand new copy of the fabulous Sidewinder cassette."
The madness didn't end there though. Later that evening, when we get to the house of an old high school friend of Ken's, the place we'd call home for a night, I go in to write my girlfriend a letter and crash while Chuck stays out on the curb to smoke a cigarette. Thus the seeds for Law Enforcement Encounter #3 are planted. Not five minutes after I leave, the cops cruise by and try to arrest Chuck for just sitting there and being a long-haired, pinko-commie, Kieth Richards lookin', earring-havin' freak in our nice, quiet, God-fearin' community. The owner of the house comes out just in time to explain that, yes, he really DOES belong here. Jesus, I can't believe this shit.
The next night we're on the 2 1/2 hour drive from Houston to Austin - all of it through a bunch of scary backwater hick towns. Dry counties. Baptist churches. Copious amounts of pickup trucks. Cows in the front yard. I'm not from around these parts, so this frightens me quite a bit. About halfway there, in Boonfuck County, we get pulled over for going 60 in a 55 zone. This, clearly, is not about exceeding the posted speed limit, but rather exceeding the unposted hair limit. The cop comes over, glances at the music gear in the van and asks "Y'all ain't in one a them god damned rock bands, are ya?" Both Andrew and I, having learned from experience, tell him that we actually play both kinds of music: Country AND Western. I have to get out of the van, of course. After going through all the preliminary this is just a warning for speeding . . . blah, blah, blah...we get down to the real business at hand...searching the car for drugs.
With all the smug assuredness that only a dumb hick Texas backwater cop who's sure he'll be taking a bunch of longhairs down to the station could muster, he asks me to please sit in the car (his) "for your safety" (yeah, right). About this time the first back-up unit arrives and they put Ken in the other car..you know, just so us dangerous drug-runners don't sit together and hatch plots against the good hard-workin', God-fearin' honest citizens of this great country. The other band members and the road guys are spread out in other units that eventually arrive. After going through the van for an HOUR, they find nothing (of course) and reluctantly let us go. The first time this happened we were relieved and happy to get away. This time we're just pissed off. I can only imagine what it must be like to be black around here.
I was told by some native Texas longhairs that back during the 1960s Texas Cops were known to cut off a guys long hair if they could bust him on any little thing.
maybe if you guys would've told them you all were trying to emulate Willie Nelson they might've quit harrassing you. after all Willies a Native Texas and has worn his hair long for decades.
That's exactly what the cops do.
They listen real carefully to what you have to
say. Just like you, if it doesn't seem true
it probably isn't. I don't think the story is
true either.
Hey man, this post is excruciatingly long, and doesn't ring true.
I agree.
Yeah, I got stopped. but it was probably cuz I was doing 65 in a 40....ya think?
The cops often arrest me for no reason. They ask questions about me. And my hair is short (But I am growing it. I got my hair shaved 2 months ago and it is about 4 centimeters long. No trimming.). No matter that my hair is long or short, I don't think it will change.