Sheldon, Iowa — Iowa State Trooper Vince Kurtz was recently on the KIWA Morning Show.
He told our listeners that he sometimes gets asked why officers stop vehicles for minor violations. He says people quite often think, or even ask, “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
Kurtz told a story about a traffic stop that Oklahoma State Trooper Charlie Hanger made for a minor offense — a license plate registration violation. He says it started just like any other traffic stop, but Hanger had a bad gut feeling as he pulled the car over so he asked the driver to meet him halfway between the cars.
But, says Kurtz, that’s not the end of the story.
Kurtz says the man that Trooper Hanger pulled over for the minor violation was Timothy McVeigh, the man convicted of the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection for the crime on June 11, 2001.
Kurtz says that by pulling people over for minor violations, it increases law enforcement’s interactions with the public, which increases the likelihood of meeting the right person at the right time.
