Hitch-hiker
Two of us on section - myself as a Highway Patrol officer in a marked Commodore and a colleague in a plain Ford Falcon - had just come on duty for a 6.00am shift. We got a call to assist with an accident on State Highway Two. En route we got a message that it was a 'head on' involving a stolen and a truck and that the truck driver was very angry. We picked up the pace a bit.
At the scene, the truck driver said he’d left the car driver with the car but he was now nowhere to be found. I put the truck driver in my car and went for a drive off the main highway and down farm drives, assuming the offender had gone to ground.
I then got a call from my colleague to meet him ASAP. A couple of kilometres north I saw him in his unmarked car with a male fitting the offender’s description. The truck driver immediately recognised the driver of the stolen vehicle.
It turned out my colleague had picked up this guy thumbing a lift, who said he was going to Manukau for a training course. Naturally my colleague obliged and gave him a free pair of bracelets to wear for the journey.