Riding along with a Utah Highway Patrol

Today, I got to spend a couple of hours early this morning going for a ride with my brother-in-law Matt who is a Utah Highway Patrol trooper. We left the house about 8:45am for two hours before I had to come back home and get dressed for church (yes, I did go to church today while on vacation).

Matt gave me a tour of the gear and equipment in the patrol car and demonstrated how he can clock cars for speeding on radar both behind and in front of him; the trick is to visually locate the vehicle that the radar has clocked so it takes some practice. As part of the standard procedure, Matt had to give me a list of instructions and sign a waiver before we left in case of any trouble. This included how to remove the shotgun from the roof-rack. That was a little surprising, but made plenty of sense considering the potential circumstances. However, the release button didn't work so he showed me where his back-up pistol was.  Since I am an experienced shooter, this didn't seem like a big deal to me to operate it.


So in the 2 hours we were out, we pulled over a few speeders and a couple of moving violators and handed out a couple of speeding tickets. It's amazing that although the speed limit was 75mph, people were still speeding upwards of 85-90mph; I guess the fuel prices aren't bad enough for them (yet). Matt works a 10 hour shift and it was great to ride along for just a part of it. I'll do it again in the future when we return some day. Thanks Matt!

Ric