My first Cops/Bad Boys experience

On the Friday of Labor Day weekend, I was riding North on I-5 with a friend on my way to a camping trip at Lassen Volcanic National Park. We were traveling behind another friend's car and were minding our own business, cruising along at a nice clip when this small SUV zips on by us. It had a noticeable dent on the passenger side doors and I thought to myself, "well...I know why you got those dents...you drive like a madman".

About 2 or 3 minutes later we saw a police cruiser kicking up rocks and dirt on the median as it pulled onto the highway in front of us (and a tanker truck). It drove down the middle of the two-lane highway and gradually slowed us down to a complete stop...we soon saw why. On the Southbound side, there were 3 cruisers parked, in front of us were several more and police officers were out of their vehicles and approaching that aforementioned SUV. There was a bit of confusion and the officers jumped back into their cars, and drove forward, but only for a few feet and then jumped back out again. I remember seeing two officers with handguns drawn on the suspects and one officer with a shotgun pointing in the same direction. Soon they had the driver out and on the ground, next a passenger and then another passenger got tossed into the ditch on the right side. Within two minutes, they were cuffed and stuffed into a police car and we were directed to move forward.

While this was happening, we were parked behind a rather large gasoline tanker (not too smart), while our friends were several yards back in a more protected location (distance-wise). Not sure what those boys did...but the officers didn't seem too fond of them.

Afterwards, I remembered the part of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" where he mentions that policemen who are involved in a high speed chase probably should not also apprehend the suspects due to heightened pulse rates and stress that lowers one's ability to think clearly. In this case, the chasers seemed to do the arresting, but nothing bad happened.