"What's up?"

How is it possible to be this stupid???

Plainclothes police Officer Patrick Hickey was recently checking license plates in an alley as part of a Des Moines drug investigation when a man asked him: "What's up?"

Hickey, believing it to be a rhetorical question, said in kind: "What's up?"

The man asked again: "What's up?"

So Hickey repeated the reply.

"I'll show you what's up," the man said just before he went inside a nearby house and came out with a .38-caliber handgun.

"The guy got a gun because I said 'What's up?' Unbelievable," Hickey said. "I had no idea he would want to shoot me for saying 'What's up?'

"Just unbelievable."

Hickey showed his badge, identified himself as an officer, and pointed a gun at the man, who dropped his weapon.

Des Moines police weren't looking for Stewart Jenkins when Hickey stopped in the alley in the 1100 block of 25th Street. But the 33-year-old fugitive from Michigan will be arraigned Friday on drug and weapons charges.

Police said they searched Jenkins and found $700 and a small amount of suspected crack cocaine. A search warrant for the house turned up $8,000 and 15 grams of alleged crack cocaine.

Jenkins is wanted in Michigan, where he was on parole for assault. He is in the Polk County Jail on more than $130,000 bond.

h/t Brent from Law & Disorder