Impersonating a police officer is against the law, for obvious reasons. Painting your Maserati to look like a Transformer, while tacky, generally isn’t. However, if you manage to combine the two, you will get arrested, as an unnamed defendant in Braintree, MA, found out.
There are a few things you need to be aware of here. First of all, a Maserati Quattroporte, which appears to be the car featured in the article, starts at $102,500. Secondly, Barricade is only a police vehicle in the Michael Bay movies, and it’s actually portrayed, in vehicle form, by a Ford Mustang. So there are two crimes against taste and several against nerdery right off the bat, but then there’s this gem from the Patriot Ledger:
Foster said the driver told Holt that he believed he was assisting the police “because other drivers noticed him and slowed down, thinking it was a police vehicle. But Foster also noted that the Maserati’s police-style shield decorations said “Decepticons punish and enslave,” rather than the usual police motto “protect and serve.”
So, basically, some guy who can afford a $100,000 car looked for the custom paint job he thought he could get away with to convince people he was a police officer without actually being one. Oh good. Hopefully he was overextending himself with the Maserati, because otherwise his next step is probably building a Bond car and using it on I-93.
Wait… rich guy …kind of a douche …buys cars just to give them ugly paint jobs. Oh Dear God. This might be Michael Bay.