Kind of sort of along the same lines....
A coworker has to appear in court in a little over a week for interfering in a police investigation. I hope his lawyer isn't a complete fool.
He got home from work and noticed some guy with a backpack walking down the street. Didn't think too much of it. He sat down in the garage and started to take his boots off and then he noticed the same guy had reversed direction. That got his attention, especially since his truck had been broken into the month prior.
So he started to watch him, and he's acting very weird. Kind of hiding behind things as he's walking down the street. So my friend gets in his truck and starts to follow him. He pulled up on the guy and asked him what he was doing. "Mind your own business." Then he took off running around the corner.
My friend wheels around the corner and he's gone - disappeared. So he drives about halfway up the block, looking between the houses and he can't find him. So he stops, puts the truck in reverse, and the back-up lights illuminate the guy crouched down in front of a vehicle on the street. My friend has had enough of this guy by this time.
He gets out of the truck and basically throws the guy into the box of the truck. The guy keeps telling him to mind his own business and "**** off" (his actual words), but won't fight back, which my friend found odd, even though he was literally kicking his *** at the time. Then a black car appears out of nowhere and the mysterious guy jumps in and it races off.
So my friend goes home, gets his neighbour, and they start to search for this car. Eventually they find it in the parking lot of a nearby grocery store. The mysterious backpack "gentleman" is gone but the driver is in the car. So they blocked him in with the truck so he couldn't drive away and surround the vehicle. The driver rolls down the window and says "Why can't you mind your own business?" and at the same time lifts a blanket to reveal a laptop and a badge.
At this point my friend realizes they're undercover cops, and goes home.
Fast forward 5 months and he receives a summons to appear in court. Just how in the hell was he supposed to know they were cops, especially given how weird they were acting?
I honestly don't think any harm will come of his court appearance, - but - it's going to cost him a small fortune to defend himself. The only good to come of this is that I now know that an undercover police officer must admit that they're a cop if you ask if they're a cop. If you just ask who they are and what they're doing, they don't have to say anything, even, apparently, if you're literally kicking their *** with steel toed boots.