Interesting - that occasionally happens to me. I do recall it being most amusing when a sober person pulled a drunk friend away from me with a "That's police, you idiot." I've also been taken as armed forced too.

I believe the kind of 'formal polite' speech and mannerisms that I tend to use trigger this false-pattern-matching sometimes. (Well, that and being large, tall and short-haired, in my case.)

Odd really, because I tend to think of both myself and you as being as un-police-like as you can get. Glad to hear neither of us are breaking the law.

(It is perhaps telling that that kind of civil-and-polite seems to be tagged as 'someone in authority' by some.)

Yes, now you mention it I suppose the short hair might have added to the image too. I tend to forget that aspect of myself most of the time (not least because I cut my hair short precisely so that I wouldn't have to think about it so often :-).