Dear PoP: I T-boned a Cop Car

Photo by PoPville Flickr user Tyrannous

“Dear PoP,

I T-boned a cop car last week. Let me explain:

Wednesday night I made a run to the Whole Foods on P St. to grab a few last-minute Thanksgiving necessities. On my way home I made a left from P St. onto 14th and within five seconds of heading north on 14th I saw something flash in front of me and next thing you know I basically t-bone a gold sedan that was (without signaling) attempting to make an illegal U-turn from the right lane on northbound 14th, all the way over to the southbound lanes.

So I’m steaming and the offending car pulls over on the opposite side of the street and a full-uniformed police officer gets out of the car. Yup, I just t-boned an unmarked cop car. Great. It turns out the cop was very cool about the whole thing — immediately apologetic, said he felt terrible about the whole thing, etc. Because the accident involved a cop car, they had to bring in crime scene investigators, the offending officer’s boss, that guy’s boss, and a bunch of other people.

After the long weekend I finally got to work on this situation with my insurance company and they are painting a bleak picture for me. First, I’m going to have to scrape together the cash for my deductible even though the accident was not my fault (this is likely due to the phrase “Official Investigation Pending” on the police report). Then, I won’t get reimbursed for that money until my insurance people get the money from the DC government — and I’m told that the bureaucracy here will be “brutal”. I’ve already emailed the officer who wrote the police report asking to amend it because of some major inaccuracies on the report vs. what really happened.

Needless to say I’m not looking forward to all of this. Here’s my question — have any of your readers ever been through anything remotely resembling this? How screwed up is this process going to prove to be? Is there anything I can do to make this easier?”

Man, that is rough. What do you guys recommend besides suggesting the reader get his/her Council Member involved?