Olden Polynice was the 8th overall pick out of Virginia in the 1987 NBA draft, initially drafted by the Chicago Bulls but immediately traded to the Seattle SuperSonics in exchange for the draft rights to Scottie Pippen. In a six-week span in the year 2000, while playing for the Utah Jazz, he got popped for impersonating a police officer twice, once in September and once in October.
I’ll start with the September one. This one happened first but came to light after the one in October was reported in the newspaper. There was a couple driving along in Salt Lake City when somebody in a Mercedes almost hit them. The man of the couple didn’t appreciate that, so he honked his horn and flipped off the car. The couple said the Mercedes began following them and tried to run them off the road, so they pulled over.
The man driving the Mercedes, Polynice, also pulled over, got out of his car, and started arguing with the couple. He then pulled out a badge, got in the man’s face, and said, “I'm with the California Sheriff's Office and I can have you arrested.”
Polynice eventually got back in his car and sped off. The couple didn’t recognize him, so they just went on their way, no doubt a little freaked out that a 7-foot-tall police officer had just tried to run them off the road.
Six weeks later, in West Valley City, a suburb of Salt Lake City, a second couple was driving home. They turned on the blinker and slowed down to make a turn. The Mercedes following behind them (again driven by Polynice) didn’t slow down enough and almost rear-ended them. Polynice, angry, began to follow them, flashed his lights at the couple, pulled up beside them while driving, and brandished his badge again, all the while screaming at them, “I’m a cop, pull over!”
They didn’t. They kept driving home, and finally arrived at their apartment building. Polynice drove up, stepped out, and yelled at the couple, “I’m with the LAPD, don’t do that again!”
He then called the woman of the couple a bitch, threatened to arrest them, got in his car, said he was going to come back, left, and eventually was arrested. The news coverage on the second instance, which included a picture of Polynice, tipped off his first victims, who came forward and claimed that he had done a similar thing to them.
Polynice was charged with and pleaded guilty to both instances. The badge that he was flashing was an honorary LAPD badge that he got when he played for the Los Angeles Clippers ten years before. Polynice testified in court that he’d thrown away the badge, paid a fine, went to anger management, and was sentenced to 130 hours of community service.
One of the Salt Lake Tribune articles mentioned that in addition to those two times he was caught, one of the district attorneys brought up a time in July of 2000 (a couple of months before the first incident) when Polynice had flashed the badge at somebody during an argument at a nightclub.
There’s no chance he just started carrying the badge 10 years after he got it. Who knows how many times Polynice has impersonated a police officer in his life?