Wow, that's pretty ridiculous.
And obviously there's some cool cops and some shitty cops, just like any other group of people. Unfortunately, my experiences with the police here in SLC have been mostly negative so far. Two of my buddies were walking their skateboards up the parking lot at the U football stadium, and not only did cops stop them, sit them down, and waste a bunch of their time just to give them a warning they also for some reason felt the need to call in two more cop cars. That was shitty and unnecessary. On a different occasion when we had a party at our house, with the size of the party, I wasn't at all surprised the cops showed up, but instead of just telling everyone to leave, they started handing out citations. One cop I talked to was a decent dude and fairly polite and respectful, but another was just an asshole, talking about how he'd love to haul me off to jail after I told him he couldn't go in the house. You don't get to do whatever you want just because you have a badge, dickwad.