Lubbock Police Department Vehicle Spotted Carrying Something Odd

A Lubbock Police Department vehicle was spotted with something kind of weird attached to the front of the grille guard this morning, as it made its way down Avenue Q toward the Marsha Sharp Freeway. I'm not exactly sure what the heck was going on, or if it's honestly even legal, but it's certainly an interesting topic for speculation.

For some reason, there was what appeared to be a Walmart shopping cart, hanging off of the front of the cruiser. You can't really tell by the picture if it was strapped on there or stuck to it, or just hooked on somehow, but it was there. I've never seen a grille guard used in that fashion, especially not on a police car, but it happened...

Check it out below, and then we will dive into some of the reasons why I think it might have been there.

Alright, so my theory, is that they are simply returning a stray shopping cart to the nearest Walmart store. That's definitely the best guess I have for this scenario. Maybe they saw a random cart that someone had stolen and are just headed to the location off of Marsha Sharp to put it back where it belongs. Sounds feasible. Maybe it just didn't fit in the back seat?

Also...

Is it legal to strap something to your grille guard, like a shopping cart?

Well, for starters, it's definitely illegal to have something obstructing the view of your license plates in Texas. I found that out the hard way when I didn't brush snow off of mine one year and was given a warning for it. When you take a closer look at the pictures, it's technically still visible from the point of view of the photographer, but that seems like a slippery slope. I think you could definitely argue that a shopping cart attached to a grille guard obstructs the view of a license plate...

Since there isn't any specific information about carrying a shopping cart down the road strapped to the front of your car on the internet (that I can find), I will compare it to a bike. It is legal in many states to strap a bike to the front or back of your vehicle if you are using the proper safety rack for it. According to BicycleUniverse.com, "Texas plates must the free of foreign material and legible", which basically leads us back to the laws I mentioned above.

I don't know know if the grille guard on the front of that police cruiser is made for carrying a bike or not, but I'm pretty sure if I attached a shopping cart to the front of a grille guard on my personal vehicle, and drove it down the road, I would be pulled over immediately and given a ticket. There are definitely regulations as to how many inches may be added to the front or back of your vehicle with the addition of bikes. I would imagine that applies to weird stuff like shopping carts too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not harping on them for returning a cart to its rightful owner if that's what was going on. It's just something you don't see every day, and I don't think it looks very safe...

Another reason it could have been there, is that someone stuck it on there as a joke, or maybe the vehicle ran into one in the parking lot and it became stuck to the front and they were unaware. A few of my coworkers think that could have been how it got there, but I just don't know. I've never heard of anyone pranking an officer like that, but it's not out of the realm of possibilities. They are in a big SUV and it could be hard to see a stray shopping cart and probably pretty easy to hit one by accident.

Anyway, that's enough of that. I just wanted to see what you guys thought about it. Comment below on this article on our Facebook page. Chances are, you know more than I do. I'm just some dummy sitting at my desk trying to figure out what the heck was happening over on Ave Q this morning...