Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

This thread is about the disturbing trend of criminals impersonating police officers.


Detroit is well known for being a "lawless" city, plagued with crime. To make matters worse, according to experts the number of police impersonators in the city is on the rise. One incident earlier this year left a 35-year-old woman dead and her 12-year-old sister wounded after men posing as police officers cut the power to their house, screamed “police”, and opened fire.

In another incident, a man was pulled over by a Crown Victoria and had his vehicle searched by “police” who stole his wallet and several CDs. Police impersonation is so common in Detroit that cops are telling civilians to keep driving unless they are pulled over by a fully marked police vehicle.

Even that won’t necessarily help, though. Earlier this year, two men were arrested for assaulting customers at a gas station, pulling their guns on the victims, and stealing cash from them. At the time, everyone assumed it was another police impersonation, but it was later found that the men were genuine police officers.


Impersonating police to commit rape

Bridget Drobney was simply trying to get back to her cousin’s wedding after dropping off her father at a relative’s home when she saw a flashing red light in her rear-view mirror. Drobney pulled over to the side of the road and was approached by three men, who pulled her from her car and drove her 19 kilometers (12 mi) into a cornfield, where they sexually assaulted her and then stabbed her to death.

Raymond Roth attempted to impersonate a police officer to get a woman into his van. Thankfully, the woman didn’t believe him and ran into a check-cashing facility. Roth chased her into the store still claiming to be a police officer. He was arrested shortly afterward and investigators are looking into two other police impersonation cases he could be implicated in.

Lacy Miller was your average University of Northern Colorado student. She was driving home from a friend’s house when she was pulled over by a vehicle with red-and-blue flashing lights. Her car was later found abandoned just two doors from her home. It took almost two weeks for police officers to find her body but only a few days to arrest Jason Clausen after he was found to have red-and-blue emergency lights in his vehicle, a bail bondsman’s badge, and Miller’s identification.

William Suff impersonated a police officer to pick up prostitutes in Riverside County, driving them to different locations where he raped, mutilated, and murdered them. He killed up to 22 women.

Terry Henry was so convincing that his neighbors believed he was a police sergeant. In reality, he was a parolee who had bought realistic police gear and outfitted his Crown Victoria with police sirens and lights. Besides pulling over motorists in Long Island and New York City and writing his own incident reports, Henry pretended to investigate a robbery and raped the victim, and coerced at least one teen to be his sex slave.

Tampa police have arrested a 31-year-old man on charges that he posed as a law enforcement officer, stopped a female motorist and raped her. The Tampa Police Department says Luis Marcelo Munuzuri Harris was taken into custody early Saturday after officers found him on the roof of a building. Harris flagged the victim down with a blue laser flashlight on Thursday and told her he was an undercover narcotics detective. He then reportedly accused her of being intoxicated, handcuffed the woman and had her get into the rear seat of his vehicle.

Carlos Ramirez impersonated a police officer in Fresno, forcing at least 5 women to get into his car and later raping them. Investigators say many of his victims were prostitutes, but not all them, and he targeted young African American women. There was another male accomplice who also was involved in at least two of the sexual assaults.


Even Mitt Romney Impersonated a Police Officer

It may be hard to believe that a presidential nominee could have been impersonating police officers when he was in college, but it’s true. According to one of his classmates at Stanford University, Robin Madden, Romney had an entire, authentic police uniform which he obtained from his governor father’s police detail. He also had red flashing lights he would attach to his white Rambler.

On one occasion, Romney decided to play the prankster, donning his police uniform and pulling over his friends, who were on a double date. He told the occupants of the car that he was going to take them in to the station. That was only one of the many times he impersonated a police officer.