I do a 150 mile relay from Chicago to Peoria every summer to raise money for St. Jude. The relay works pretty much like any other relay where you get a team together and take turns running legs that are anywhere from 3-6 miles long. Each leg will have at least one person from each team running; sometimes more depending on what leg it is and what time of day, etc. Since the route takes us down some major US highways that aren't blocked off like they are for races, the runners get to be escorted by police. A police car will drive in front of the group to clear away any traffic up ahead and another one will drive in the back of the group to make sure that all of the runners finish their leg safely.
Well, one of these legs is a sprint leg, which is longer than the rest of the legs but it's broken down into one mile increments. Instead of everyone running together as a group, one person from each team runs one of the miles as fast as they can. And even though there is only one person running at a time, you still get the police escort.
A few years ago during the sprint leg, one of the runners happened to be running through a residential area. There were some people sitting out on their front porch that apparently didn't know what was going on. They saw this guy running with a police car in front of him and another one in back of him with their lights on, and assumed that he was actually running FROM the police and that the police were trying to corner then surround him. So, the people sitting on the porch ran down to the end of their driveway to watch the commotion. It's a good thing that they were cheering on the runner and supporting his effort to "runaway from those cops," because it would be funny if they ended up jumping the runner in attempt to save the day!
~Tom, Chicago Ill
