The volts on you

Sometimes it seems like everybody wants to be a cop until it’s time to do what cops do.

But recently a Fayetteville police officer was stunned to find—and stunned, literally, when he or she found—that 45-year-old Valerie Hadley was ready and willing to employ measures typically reserved for officers in furtherance of her mission.

Though Sidebar has to admit that it has no idea what her mission was.

But the news out of the All-America City goes like this: Hadley allegedly called 911 April 16 and told a Cumberland County dispatcher that she had a license plate number and needed information on the vehicle’s owner. According to the dispatcher, Hadley identified herself as a Fayetteville police officer and provided a badge number.

Rather than divulge the requested information, the emergency operator sent officers to Hadley’s location. Those real officers quickly ascertained that Hadley was not one of their colleagues and attempted to arrest her.

While Hadley’s motives are unclear, she made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t going to jail peacefully. According to a news report in the Fayetteville Observer, Hadley shoved and scratched officers before stunning one of them with the officer’s own Taser.

After a “prolonged battle,” the report says, Hadley was subdued and taken to the detention center where she continued to insist to a magistrate that she was a cop.

And where deputies exchanged her presumably fabricated badge for a booking number.