The warrant said Robertson. Six feet tall, two hundred fifty pounds, long red hair, bushy red beard, lived at 123 Elm Street. Pretty distinctive dude. I rolled up to the address and there he was, mowing his front lawn—six foot, two-fifty, red hair, red beard, exactly as advertised.
I made contact. “Mr. Robertson, you’ve got warrants. Time to go.
”
He came along without a fuss. Hooked him up, took him to jail, got his property off him in central booking. While I was filling out the inventory, I happened to glance at his ID. Robinson.
Not Robertson. Turns out the guy I’d just arrested was the landlord of the guy I was actually supposed to pick up. And they looked like twins—same height, same build, same hair, same beard. Doppelgangers.
When I called him Robertson, he didn’t even notice I’d said the wrong name. He just heard something close enough and answered. We had to walk the whole thing back, reactivate the warrant, and kick him loose with a handshake and an apology. The real Robertson got picked up another day.
But I never trusted a physical description the same way again. The other side of that badge came years later, when I was the one in cuffs. I got off duty at two in the morning and was driving home, still in uniform. The road was dead empty, so when a patrol car turned in behind me, I figured he was trolling for drunks.
I was the only thing moving out there. He’d watch my driving, see I was sober, and peel off in a minute. Then another patrol car joined him. Then another.
Then a whole line of them boxed me in and stopped me like a felony stop. Well. This just got interesting. They went through the full procedure, and I followed every instruction to the letter.
When they finally got me out and saw my uniform, they just stopped. Stood there for a few seconds, staring. Then three of the officers got back in their cars, killed their lights, and drove off. The original officer told me I could put my hands down.
My car was a spot-on match for the suspect vehicle in an armed robbery and shooting that had happened right up the road. I’d driven past the scene before the cops even got there. The officer in the next district spotted me and thought he had his man. Not the best night.
But at least nobody got shot over it. There’s another man, two years younger than me, who shares my exact first and last name. Same spelling. Only difference is the middle name.
I found out about him the hard way. A plainclothes cop in an unmarked car showed up at my door with a woman holding a clipboard. He identified himself as a state trooper, and within five minutes he was asking for copies of my bank records. Threatening a subpoena if I didn’t comply.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been mistaken for the other guy. I used to get his mail all the time. So I asked, straight up, whether they were looking for me or the other man. Pointed out the middle names.
He didn’t have an answer. The whole thing felt wrong. A high-pressure situation, demands for financial records, threats of legal action. And the badge he flashed was just a plastic square, like a driver’s license.
I started thinking this was a scammer trying to squeeze me. I told him I wanted to speak with the police and called dispatch. Two uniformed officers showed up fifteen minutes later and confirmed the guy was legit. The woman was some kind of auditor.
After another fifteen minutes of questions, she pulled the plainclothes guy aside and pointed at something on her phone. They wanted the other man. I got an apology and a handshake, and they left. The investigation was about a county trustee handing out housing assistance checks to people who didn’t qualify.
The other guy was one of the civilians being looked at. My name just happened to be hanging there, waiting for me to trip over it. I lived in a small town in rural England growing up. Pre-internet, so there wasn’t much to do besides walk to the supermarket.
Me and some friends were doing exactly that when a police car came screaming out of nowhere, sirens going, and screeched to a halt in front of us. A young guy jumped out, couldn’t have been more than five years older than us. He lined us up and gave us the full grilling. Demanded statements about what we’d been up to.
Gloating at us: “You lads are in trouble now. Criminal damage, trespass, theft. You’ve really screwed up. ”
Then the local bobby came up to each of us in turn, jovial as could be.
“Don’t worry, lads. I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding. We’ve had reports of a break-in, and you don’t match the preliminary description. We’ll get it cleared up once the detailed description comes through.
”
The detailed description came through the radio. The young guy looked like someone had stolen his birthday. The description didn’t match us in any way. He looked so disappointed we actually felt sorry for him.
My mum had her own run-in with mistaken identity. It revolved around America’s Most Wanted. A woman who looked almost exactly like her was featured on the show. Same hair, same face.
And the kicker—same name. They even showed my mum’s actual information on the broadcast, listed as the criminal’s. My mum was sitting at home alone on a Saturday night, reading a Stephen King book. She hadn’t seen the show.
She heard commotion in the hallway and ignored it. Lots of yelling. Then BAM. Her door came down.
About ten cops flooded into her one-bedroom apartment and arrested her. She said they had the wrong person. They said everything matched. Social security number matched.
DNA matched. Name matched. Photo resemblance matched. The woman on the show had been stealing my mum’s identity the whole time, deliberately making herself look like her.
When the investigators built a profile for the criminal, they used my mum’s information as the foundation. So when they arrested her, of course everything matched. It was her information. They held her for two weeks.
It wasn’t until they ran fingerprints from the crime scene against her prints that they figured out she wasn’t the criminal. If they’d used her profile prints instead of the crime scene prints as the comparison, she’d still be in jail today. My husband and I were having a lazy Sunday morning. Pancakes, music blasting, having a good time.
Then the banging started on the door. I rushed over, thinking someone had knocked a couple times before we heard it. Opened it up to four police officers who pushed straight into our kitchen. Two of them grabbed my husband and told him he was under arrest for a hit and run in a city almost two hours away.
My husband freaked out. He explained he’d been at work all night and had only gotten home about an hour earlier. He must have been convincing, because two officers sat down at our kitchen table with us while the other two went outside to call his workplace. The car involved in the accident—which had hit three parked cars and a woman the night before—was one we’d sold about a year earlier.
The woman had minor injuries, thankfully. The driver had jumped out and vanished. There was clear video of the car smashing into the parked cars, hitting the pedestrian, and the man running off. When the police found the abandoned car and ran the VIN, it led them to our house.
In Ontario, when you sell a vehicle, you’re supposed to file a slip with the ServiceOntario center to prove the ownership transferred. But it’s not really enforced, and there are no penalties for skipping it. The buyer needs to do the same to get plates and insurance, but we hadn’t done our part. Obviously and stupidly.
The cops came back in, apologized for the mistake, gave us a lecture about properly transferring ownership, and left. The actual driver was caught the next day. An officer called my husband to tell him and joked about us having to pay impound fees. I had this problem for years because some guy named Frank had my phone number before I did.
The first year, people kept calling me looking for him. Just normal people, annoying but harmless. I’d ignore them. Then one day I’m in class and my phone buzzes.
I send it to voicemail. It immediately calls back. I send it again. It calls again.
So I step outside to see who the hell needs to talk to me that badly. It was a cop, looking for Frank. I politely told him this wasn’t Frank’s number, and I didn’t know any Frank. He asked if I was sure.
I was pretty sure I’d know if I knew some random dude people kept wanting to reach. He believed me, said he’d make a note, and apologized. That was the last I heard of Frank for five years. Two years ago, I was at work and a number I didn’t recognize called.
I sent it to voicemail, and they actually left a message. Dear old Frank had gotten into some kind of trouble. A very stern-sounding woman told him he was going to be served the next day, and if he wasn’t at home, they were coming to his job. He better not try to hide.
I laughed about it with my coworkers. They didn’t even have his current phone number. How were they going to find him? The next day, the lady called again.
I answered, because I didn’t want to spend any more time on Frank’s issues than I had to. She started explaining how she was going to Frank’s house to serve him, and I stopped her. Told her this wasn’t Frank’s number, hadn’t been in years—and she hung up on me mid-sentence. Extremely rude.
Extremely unprofessional. But that was the last I heard of Frank. I was sitting in my apartment. My girlfriend was in the shower.
I heard knocking, ignored it. Heard it again, looked out the window, saw nothing. Then came the cop knock. I got up and opened the door.
Two cops with guns drawn were hiding behind the door frames and told me to put my hands up. I complied. They asked if I was there with my girlfriend. I was confused, but I said yes—because I was.
They stormed in and cuffed me. About that time, my girlfriend came out of the shower, saw me handcuffed, and was understandably pissed. The whole time I was asking what was going on, saying I thought there had been a mistake. Then one of the cops pointed out the door to an old guy.
“Is this not your dad? ”
It wasn’t. “No. What is going on?
”
The cops looked at the old guy. He stumbled over his words. “No, no, no. That is not my son.
”
The cops turned white. They were super embarrassed. They left quickly. A couple hours later, one of them came back to apologize.
Apparently that old dude had gotten a phone call from his estranged son, who said he had a gun and was going to shoot his girlfriend. I don’t know what came of that. But it wasn’t me. And that dad apparently didn’t even know where his son lived.
Crazy day. Then I went and got tacos and a margarita. In high school, me and my three best friends were having a sleepover at one of their houses. We wanted to watch Netflix on the TV but didn’t have an HDMI cable.
My friend’s dad offered to drive us to Walmart, but her older sister said she’d take us instead. Kind of an important detail. We made a turn out of the neighborhood onto the main road and saw sirens behind us. My friend’s sister pulled over.
When the sirens didn’t pass us, we realized we were being pulled over. By the time we figured it out, the officer was already at the window. He had a powerful voice. He yelled at my friend’s sister to roll the window down now.
By that point, we were shaking and freaking out. The moment she rolled it down, he shined his flashlight at all of us and saw five terrified teenage girls. He immediately backed off. Asked for her license.
She handed it over, and I remember how much her hand was shaking. “Do you know why I pulled you over? ”
“No, sir. I honestly have no idea.
”
“It’s because of the way you came out of that neighborhood. ”
“Okay. ”
“Are these your sisters? ”
He was backpedaling by then, because we clearly weren’t sisters.
He continued: “Well, your car matched the description of another car. So, yes. Here’s your license. Have a good night.
”
Once we were driving again, my friend’s sister said, “I’m so glad my dad didn’t end up driving you. ”
I thought about that a lot. What would have happened if a grown man had been behind the wheel instead of five teenage girls? I’m a dispatcher.
I’ve got two stories. One: I get a call from another county asking about a stolen license plate or car—I don’t remember which. I ran what they had, and it came back stolen, reported with our agency. The officer on the other end said they were out with the car and the registered owner, who claimed they’d never reported anything stolen and had never been to their county.
Long story short: our agency had entered the plate with a typo. The dispatcher had written out the entry log by hand first, then entered it into the terminal based on that handwritten log. They couldn’t read their own handwriting and typed the wrong letter. What’s worse, we do second and third party checks on all entries, so an experienced dispatcher and the shift supervisor both signed off on it.
Nobody got in trouble. Two: we received a warrant confirmation request from another agency and confirmed the warrant based on the request. Turned out the other agency had stopped a kid and ran him by name. His name was similar to someone who had a warrant in our county.
When their dispatcher sent the confirmation request, they used the info from our warrant entry to ask if we had a warrant on that person. Well, of course we did. What kind of stupid question is that? You’re supposed to send the request using the info your officer gives you.
If they’d done that, we probably would have spotted the error. So this kid who’d never been to our county, who’d never been in trouble his whole life, was picked up on a warrant that wasn’t his and held in jail from Friday until Monday because it was a no-bond warrant and he had to wait to see a judge. The kid’s father found out who confirmed the warrant on our side and started harassing her on Facebook. That was fun.
I was at my boyfriend’s apartment in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in a rough neighborhood. We were watching a movie on the couch. I took my sleeping pills and fell asleep around one-thirty in the morning. There was loud banging on the door.
My boyfriend got up to investigate. My pills had knocked me out hard, so I barely opened my eyes and saw him get yanked out the door. About nine officers flooded the apartment. They started asking me questions while I was barely coherent: Are you okay?
Did you call the police? How long have you been asleep? What’s your name? From outside, my boyfriend tried telling them I’d fallen asleep watching a movie.
They berated him for trying to answer for me. They had him against the wall, patting him down, about to cuff him. They radioed dispatch to call back the number that had dialed 911 and started searching the apartment, listening for the phone. I held up my phone and told them we hadn’t called the police.
They wouldn’t listen. Once I could finally get a word in, I asked what this was all about. A woman in apartment 29 was being beaten by her boyfriend. He was dragging her around by her hair, so she’d called the police.
“This is apartment 29,” I told them. “There’s also B29, C29, and D29. ”
Suddenly they all rushed over and looked baffled. Then they started yelling, “We’ve got the wrong unit, we’ve got the wrong unit!
” and just like that, they were gone. There were dents in the door. We didn’t get an apology. But I was actually happy with the way they handled it.
If I’d called the police about a domestic abuse case, they would have treated me like a priority too. I was walking out of Walmart with groceries when a police helicopter started circling the parking lot. Over the PA system, they described me. “You in the gray shirt, bald head, in the parking lot next to the green car.
Get down on the ground. ”
Everyone in the parking lot stared at me. I didn’t listen, because I kept thinking I hadn’t done anything wrong. They must be talking to someone else.
As I was putting the groceries in my car, I saw six or seven police cruisers coming through the lot, sirens on. I stood there like a deer in headlights. They surrounded me, drew their guns, shouted at me to get on the ground. I complied.
They patted me down and asked what I was doing at some apartment complex. “I was never there. ”
They checked my ID. Right after, I noticed the officers seemed confused.
They weren’t acting hard anymore. Then an older guy who looked high-ranking walked up. “You’re free to go. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
”
“What was all this about? ”
“Well, for lack of a better phrase—oopsie. ”
He shook my hand. Then he hugged me.
We both laughed it off. As I was driving out of the parking lot, all those same officers—and many more—had another man arrested on the hood of a police car. Bald head, gray shirt, green car. Everything identical.
A few years ago, near the end of 2015, my dad was a reserve officer and I was on a ride-along with him. We were sitting in traffic on the way to get lunch when he punched in the license plate of the car in front of us and got a hit. The plates didn’t match the car. He pulled them over and got the story.
The driver was out on a $10,000 bond, and whether it was the plate issue or something else, he ended up arrested. He was polite and respectful. Everyone was. The entire ride to the jail was weird, though.
When we got inside and began processing, his name came up twice—with two different bonds. One was significantly higher. Ten times higher. This was strange for a number of reasons, according to pretty much everyone there.
The most bizarre part: this person was in the system twice. Same name, same address, same image, same prints. But nearly everything else was wrong. The crime was across the state and not on record.
The version with the $100,000 bond had details like tattoos the guy my dad was processing didn’t have. Also scars, jewelry descriptions, things that didn’t match. As per protocol, they had to wait for someone from the state police to come verify the double entry. The man being processed was held at the station until they could sort it out.
I wasn’t there for the rest, but I got some details later. Turns out the guy my dad processed and the $100,000 bond guy had been misfiled somewhere down the line by a court clerk. For the longest time, I expected to hear someone in the court system was paid off to cover for the $100,000 bond guy so he could escape. Then again, I spent a lot of time bored on ride-alongs in an old Crown Vic.
Still loved it, though. I was sitting in university class when my roommate called and told me the police were asking for me. They wouldn’t tell him why. My mind went crazy, running through everything I could have gotten in trouble for.
Which was basically nothing—maybe some illegal downloads. I still couldn’t concentrate, so I decided to go to the police station and clear it up. I walked in and stated my business. “Hi, my name is [first and surname].
I was told you were looking for me. ”
I heard the door lock behind me. “Are you [first and surname]? Did you move from this state to that state a few months ago?
”
“Yes, I did. ”
“Can I please know what’s going on? ”
No answer. Another officer came in with a piece of paper.
They both looked at it, then at me. More officers came in and did the same. This went on for a few minutes. I had no idea what was happening.
When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I asked again. So they told me: they were looking for a [first and surname] who moved from that state to this state a few months ago. He stole a car and committed some other crimes—theft, maybe fraud. “And he looks like this.
”
They turned the paper around so I could see. From a distance, it really looked like me. But when I looked closer, I could tell it wasn’t. It was close enough that even people who knew me a bit could have mixed us up.
It took a few more minutes to convince them it wasn’t me. They eventually let me go. I got called down to my high school principal’s office at the end of the day. Four very serious-looking cops were waiting.
They started asking me about my friend—whether she’d been acting normal at the end of the day before. I said yeah, everything was normal. Then: had I drawn on her with a highlighter the day before? I had.
We were friends in high school, so when she said “You better not draw on me,” I obviously did. They got even more serious. “Well, if she said no, why would you do it? ” “Do you just do things anyway whenever someone tells you no?
” All kinds of insinuating questions. Then they asked for the highlighter. I’d broken it a few minutes after drawing on her and thrown it away. They weren’t believing me whatsoever.
But then they started calling buses, so I told them my mom worked and unless someone was giving me a ride, I had to catch mine. They said something along the lines of: “We don’t have enough to detain you, but we’ll be back tomorrow to speak with you further. Really think about whether you actually threw that highlighter away. ”
Turns out my friend had been drugged or poisoned the day before, during lunch.
Someone slipped something into her drink. The hospital said it was possible the drug was mixed into the highlighter ink and could have been administered that way. Me. The sixteen-year-old stoner who was failing chemistry.
Apparently a criminal mastermind on the level of Walter White, mixing poison into highlighters just to mess with my friend before she went home, to no benefit of my own. Her dad was former NYPD. He called the cops and chewed them out for harassing me, told them I didn’t do anything and to leave me alone. I didn’t tell my mom about it for a year.
Now I realize them questioning me without a parent or lawyer present was super illegal.