It’s Friday evening, October 8, 2004. A documentary of the MotoGP motorcycle racing series (shown to the right) is being shown at a few local theaters and a roommate and I decide to meet up with some other sportbike friends for one of the Friday evening showings in Tempe. After a quick stop at the corner gas station at about 6:15pm, we head to Interstate 17 and begin our trip southbound toward central Phoenix.

We’re headed against the flow of typical weekday, rush hour traffic, so there aren’t too many vehicles on the freeway. We merge to the HOV lane and fall into the flow of traffic. About 8 miles later, we come upon a car in the HOV lane doing at least 10 miles per hour less than the flow of traffic. My roommate signals and moves into the lane to our right. As he accelerates back up to the flow of traffic, I signal and slide in behind him. Shortly after passing the vehicle, I signal and retake the HOV lane. For the time being, my roommate remains in the leftmost non-HOV lane. Having passed the slow vehicle, we’re now doing the flow of traffic yet again.

Perhaps a mile later, I notice two “odd” headlights in one of my rear view mirrors. I realize right away that it’s two other motorcyclists. But at the moment, they’re quite a ways behind my roommate and me. Less than a mile later, I look in my mirror again; this time the flashing lights of a police car dominate the view to the rear. While I immediately feel a bit tense, after a second or two elapses, I begin to think that the officer must simply be responding to an unrelated radio call. Not only is the officer is quite a ways behind us, but the two of us having done nothing wrong, aside from perhaps slightly exceeding the posted speed limit in order to maintain the flow of light Friday evening traffic.

In the interest of yielding the HOV lane to the officer, I signal and move the right, beside and slightly behind my roommate. While beginning to close the gap between us, the officer also changes lanes such that he is directly behind us. Still not realizing what is going on, my roommate and I change lanes yet again. Yet again, the officer changes lanes and continues closing the gap. We perform one final lane change to the rightmost lane, at which point the officer’s vehicle is now directly behind us. It’s obvious at this point that the officer is intent on pulling the two of us over. Just north of the Indian School Road bridge, we pull off onto the right shoulder of the freeway and turn off our bikes.

Before I even have a chance to remove my helmet and ear plugs, Officer #4957, J. Woodhull, of the Arizona Department of Public Safety, approaches to my left and begins saying something. I inform him that I can’t hear him until I take my helmet off, to which he rudely barks an order at us to remove our helmets. As I’m removing the helmet and earplugs, he very angrily asks us if we have any idea how fast we were going. I inform him that I have no idea how fast we were going and that I was more concerned about the vehicles around me not running me over. At this point, he screams back with some comments about how fast and recklessly we were riding. After a brief description of what he claims he saw, I was absolutely perplexed. I asked him if he was watching us, knowing full well that we didn’t do anything close to what he had just described. He barks back that he was in fact watching us, and shortly thereafter asks for license, registration and proof of insurance.

As my roommate and I are opening up the bikes and extracting the requested items, a second officer pulls up in front of us in another DPS car. Not more than a minute or two after handing the officer Woodhull our information, he asks my roommate to take his jacket off and put his hands behind his back! The officer proceeds to handcuff him and place him in the back of the second officer’s car. Having seen my roommate get handcuffed and dealt with the officer’s attitude for a few minutes now, it was obvious what was to come next. As the officer returned to me, I began taking my jacket off, after which he handcuffed me and placed me in the back of his own patrol vehicle.

As I was placed into the back of the car, I noticed a young man sitting in the front passenger seat of the vehicle. This guy goes by the name of John Robert Hopper, and happened to be officer Woodhull’s ride along guest that night. A minute or two later, Hopper exits the vehicle and assists the two officers in filling out the traffic tickets and looking over our information.

Perhaps 20 minutes later, a flatbed truck arrives to impound our motorcycles. I watch as the officer helps load both bikes onto the truck. I don’t even let other people do maintenance or repair work on my bike, and here I am handcuffed in the back of a police car, watching the wrecker and officer Woodhull push my bike up the sloped truck bed, knowing full well that neither of them would admit to being responsible for any damage that may occur in the event that the bike falls.

Ten minutes later, the bikes are loaded and the truck pulls away. Officer Woodhull returns to his vehicle and we pull away onto I-17 southbound. At the Jefferson exit we are reunited with the second officer, who has been waiting on the offramp for us. Less than five minutes later, we’re in downtown Phoenix being booked into the new 4th Avenue Jail, just north of the Madison Street Jail. The traffic stop occurred at 6:30pm and it is now about 7:30pm.