a friend of mine in high school was headed to a grateful dead show, and they were sitting in traffic waiting to get into the venue, smoking a joint, when a fat guy on harley pulled up next to them..420 stuff all over the jacket and helmet, so they offered him a hit...he abruptly took out his badge, and arrested all of them...

 

DAMN! thats one way to ruin someones day right there! LOL

 

To answer your question - a cop is a cop - off duty or not. On more fingers than I can count I had to enact police powers while in plain clothes - however I was never stupid enough to try to initiate a traffic stop or tell someone to pull over or threaten them because of a traffic infraction. If they were driving that badly and dangerously, then I contacted dispatch and had them get a car en-route and would keep in contact with the officer or dispatch (we had radios in our personal cars) until they initiated the stop... then I would write the ticket.

A few things are key here - while in most states proving identity of the operator is necessary in order to write a citation, there are some states (Illinois being one of them) where the responsibility of vehicle belongs to the registered owner. I think that is BS myself, but that is how they use tollway & red-light cameras in this state and get away with it.

I wouldn't worry about getting a ticket in the mail, and chances are it was just some wannabe anyhow. Most real officers wouldn't be stupid enough to pull a stunt like that - they would have called a car or uniformed officer to pull you over then cite you.

As far as the citizen's summons - yes - it can happen, but only if the complainant signs an affidavit. 99.9999999% of the courts in the US will not bother to waste their time in doing this for a traffic infraction because it boils down to a heresay issue. Without a witness to support the complaint or affidavit, you could contest it in your sleep claiming you were on the other side of town, or that this person was holding a grudge because you flipped them off for tailgating you... any judge worth his salt would have thrown it out right there, but to be honest - unless this was boredom-town podunk - the county clerk, magistrate or officer who took the complaint should have dismissed it on site.

 

He got them because they forgot the cardinal rule... Always pass it to the left!