True Crime Lite: A Waste of a Perfectly Good Chipotle Gift Card
Who doesn't love getting a good gift card? If you're hard pressed to figure out what to get somebody it can be the perfect thing. As if gift cards to retails store weren't awesome enough, some beautiful guardian angel to the hungry made them to restaurants as well. Now, you might be wondering what gift cards have to do with true crime. It's certainly one hell of a leap, but somehow I'll manage to make it from here.
In December of 2008, Adan Juarez Ramirez decided that for whatever reason he was "infuriated with police." So he decided to do what any normal human-being would when they're feeling disgruntled with law enforcement. He bought a fancy emergency lighting system for his truck that was very similar to the ones used by some agencies undercover departments. He also forged a police identification card. As flashy and impressive as his red and white emergency lights were, his fake ID left plenty to be desired.
His phony identification was made from a Chipotle gift card. The blackened card still had the Chipotle logo plainly visible along the top. Right underneath the logo the word "police" was written in childish looking print. While the lights would give plenty of people reason to pause, that ID wasn't fooling anybody. Not to mention the fact that he never seemed to stop and think that anyone he pulled over might want to see a badge, which he did not have.
It was a Sunday night in December of 2008, when Adan Juarez Ramirez decided to take his new lights and ID for a test drive. He took to the streets of Grapevine, a city and suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. Once he hit Highway 360 he got behind a couple also traveling the stretch of highway and flipped his emergency lights on. The driver of the car Adan was attempting to pull over had an uneasy feeling about the man driving what appeared to be an undercover vehicle. Instead of pulling over, he called 911 from the drivers seat to inquire if this truck even belonged to a police officer. The dispatcher and the driver quickly figured out that it did not.
Police were quickly en route as the driver directed the dispatcher, who then directed the officers. Adan was pulled over in the 1700 block of William B. Tate while the couple escaped to tell the strange and terrifying tale. Adan gave no explanation as to why he had bought and mounted the lights, though he did admit to doing so himself. He also admitted to turning the lights on while following the couple. The driver was credited with the capture of the odd man impersonating an officer for unknown reasons. Sergeant Kim Smith said of the arrest, "It was incredible teamwork between the witness, our dispatcher, and the officers to coordinate where they were going to go to apprehend this man."
While the officers' reactions to the homemade Chipotle police ID are unknown, it's safe to say that at least one had a hard time containing their mirth. Adan was arrested on the spot and jailed with an immigration hold. According to police records, he was a Mexican citizen. There is no more available information on what happened to Adan Juarez Ramirez, but we can safely assume that without an American citizenship he was deported back to Mexico.
Officers never got an answer for his intentions behind the elaborate lighting system and the fake ID. We can laugh at his attempt at impersonating an officer because it all went so badly the first time. Though, it is spine-chilling to think of what he may have been trying to do. We'll never know for sure what Adan had in store for those he would've pulled over in his phony undercover vehicle. The thought is terrifying enough to keep your focus on the hilariously bad identification card he tried to make himself at home out of a gift card. I honestly want to know how the person that bought him that gift card reacted when they learned what he did with it.
Some take-aways from this story: Never waste a perfectly good gift card like that! Someone was nice enough to buy that for you to not be a creep with it. Don't impersonate the police. They don't like it, other people don't like it, and there's no good reason for you to be doing it. Finally, if you're not a legal citizen of the country you're living in, maybe don't do things like mount flashing lights to your truck and attempt to pull people over. You don't need to draw that much attention to yourself. Nobody does.