[The photo at right is the result of what happened when WJZ asked Hartz to draw a picture of the impersonator was drawn by Hartz not long after she was pulled over. Here's your suspect, Baltimore.]
When the man dressed in a wig and Harry Potter glasses with caked-on makeup and lipstick pulled her over and said he was a police officer, Erin Hartz thought she was an unwitting participant in the next John Waters movie.
"This would only happen in Baltimore," the 23-year-old recalls thinking.
The man flicked on a flashlight and shined it in her eyes, scanned her license and registration, then told her not to speed. "Get home and drive safe." She breathed a sigh of relief that he had let her off with only a warning, then the absurdity of the situation washed over her.
Police say the man impersonating an officer has been pulling people over in the area in recent weeks, most recently on Sunday when he made off with a woman's driver's license after stopping her in North Baltimore.
Read the rest of Hartz's story here.
While police say the man is an impersonator, police in Florida did use an officer in drag in a traffic initiative. In 2006, a male officer in West Palm Beach dressed in drag to hand out red-light tickets. He went by — you can't make this stuff up — "Officer Delicious" and would stand on the corner in fishnets and high heels watching for cars running through traffic lights. Then he would radio the vehicle description to uniformed motorcycle units.