The Joke-Cracking, Powder-Slaying Cops of Truckee, California
It’s a spring day, and I’m waiting for a snowboarder with a cop mustache at the base of the Funitel at Palisades Tahoe.
When Pete Mann rolls up in a nondescript black hoodie, he’s easy to spot. In the ski town of Truckee, Mann, a California Highway Patrol officer, is everyone’s favorite cop. He’s laid-back, funny, and if he pulls you over, he’ll ask how you’re doing in a tone that suggests he actually cares. When a new person joins the force, Mann will tell them, “Remember you’re dealing with someone on what could be the worst day of their life. Put yourself on their level.”
Mostly, though, Mann is beloved locally for starting the Truckee CHP Instagram account, which has over 267,000 followers in a town of 16,000 residents. Some of the most popular posts have more than 16 million views. The social media account has become the go-to source for anyone driving over Donner Pass—one of the sketchiest roadways in ski country during a storm—thanks to critical, up-to-the-minute information on chain control, road closures on Interstate 80, and accident reports. But it’s also surprisingly hilarious and unafraid to poke fun at goobers who drive into a storm unprepared.
A recent photo of a car in a ditch was paired with this caption: “We’re starting to think y’all are aiming for the snowbanks and ditches on purpose.” There was the U-Haul trailer that detached and crashed into the Truckee exit sign. “Well, that’s one way to let us know you’re moving to town,” the post reads. Accompanying an image of a Tesla Cybertruck half sunk into a local reservoir: “Remember folks, Wade Mode isn’t Submarine Mode.”
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The big rig content tends to get the highest engagement. A truck hauling egg cartons flipped into the center median on I-80: “This is one egg-splosive situation. With egg prices the way they are, this might be the most expensive mess we’ve seen all year. Watch out for personnel, they’re out there walking on eggshells.”
The comments—of which there are sometimes hundreds—are usually aspiring comics chiming in with their own witty captions or straight-up praise: “Literally the best account on Instagram,” one commenter said. Another: “I don’t even live here and I love this page,” and “Whoever runs this page deserves a raise.”
In addition to real-time information, the account offers useful winter driving tips, cloaked in humor. “Don’t go full Fast & Furious on us.” “P.S. The guy tailgating you? Probably just excited about the snow. Let him pass; his stress isn’t yours.” “Pro tip: Trailers don’t do well as sleds. Make sure everything is properly secured before driving in winter conditions.” “Slow down, increase your following distance, and always assume it’s slick. Better to arrive late than sideways!”
Photos from local roadways come in from a fleet of officers, who send in images often in the middle of the night, like they’re a content creation team (which, in a way, they are).
At Palisades, Mann and I lap the steeps off the Siberia chair and chat on the lift rides. He works 12-hour shifts, three days a week. That means he gets four days a week to ride—he’s also a splitboarder and a snowmobiler—and hang with his two boys, ages 8 and 13, who are both in the freeride program at Palisades. Before he became a CHP officer in 2006, Mann was a pro wakeboarder who grew up skiing in Tahoe.
On the lift, he tells me that cheap cat litter can be a useful tool to sprinkle under your tires to gain traction and that snow tires are essential. “Four-wheel drive doesn’t mean four-wheel go if you don’t have the right shoes on,” he says. “If you’re driving so fast you’re losing traction, it’s going to go sideways real fast.”
I say, “Sometimes people think cops are…” I pause, trying to find the right words without being offensive.
“Ambiguous robots?” he fills in for me.
“Yes. That.”
“Other social accounts have that very robotic law enforcement syndrome: ‘We did this, here is what happened,’” Mann says. “You could have AI write that stuff. I think humor goes a long way in making something memorable.”
The point he’s trying to make is if you want people to slow down on the highway when it’s snowing and icy, you’ll have a bigger impact through humor than dry public service announcements.
“Anything that makes people happy, they tend to remember it,” Mann says.
“Even if it’s a car accident?” I ask.
“Yeah, or you know, a guy driving his car into the lake. If you can put some quip on it and drop a safety message underneath, it sticks over time.”
This all started in November 2014, when the CHP instructed individual areas to develop their own Facebook pages. “There were a lot of constraints,” Mann said. “We had to walk that blue and gold line.” Mann gave a pitch to his commander at the time: “Look, I’ve seen what other law enforcement agencies elsewhere are doing. They’re saying, ‘We arrested this many guys. We did this, or that.’ Nobody cares. I said, ‘We see some of the craziest stuff. Let’s post a car in a snowpack and jab a little. People will learn and get a chuckle, and it’ll stick in their heads.” His commander responded, “I love it. Let’s run it until they tell us to stop.”
By 2018, the powers that be said yes to Instagram, too, and Mann set up the account right away. The Truckee page gained so much traction that it eventually had more followers than the California Highway Patrol’s main page. These days, between Facebook, Instagram, and X, Truckee CHP has over 850,000 followers, more than some celebrities.
There are a few rules to follow, of course. No photos of faces or license plates, no names or identifying features. No photos of any crash that resulted in serious injuries or fatalities. “We’re not war profiteering off gore,” Mann says. One of the few photos Mann has had to remove was a Christmastime post of an Oscar Meyer Wiener truck that crashed into a snowbank. The comments got too unruly, so Mann’s boss told him to take it down.
In 2022, Mann was sent back out on the road, so he handed over the keys to the social accounts to Carlos Perez, now Truckee CHP’s Public Information Officer and the current wordsmith behind the social captions. When Perez took over, he added more music to the posts. A photo of a campervan wrong-side-up on the highway is paired with the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song lyrics: “Now this is a story all about how. My life got flipped, turned upside down.” Ice-covered roadways are given soundtracks from the Disney movie “Frozen.” Another post, paired with Starship’s song “Nothing’s Gonna Stop us Now,” said: “Chain control dropped! We know, we know… Nothing’s gonna stop us now! But let’s be real, ice and slick roads just might.”
When Mann and I are done hunting corn on the mountain, we ski to the base and find Perez in the parking lot, dressed in full uniform and standing next to his CHP-issued Chevy Tahoe, a formal contrast to Mann and his hoodie.
When I go to shake his hand, Perez says he’s a hugger, which is a surprise, but also isn’t. For cops, these guys are notably friendly. “Oftentimes when we arrive on the scene, the first thing a driver will say to us is, ‘Please don’t post this on Instagram,’” Perez tells me. “They know. It resonates with people. That shows we’re doing something right.”
Which begs the question: Is all of this working? Are people driving safer, are there fewer crashes? I ask my new cop friends this. “I would love to say yes,” Mann responds. “Mostly, though, drivers are just more informed, and perhaps entertained, than they’ve ever been.”
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