Good luck with that! The side of the road is no place for yelling at or threatening cops.

Yeah that would probably not go well at all. However, there's no reason you can't have a polite conversation where you imply you know the sheriff personally. You can ask something like "How is Laurie doing?" and then something relevant like "My sister used to hang out with her in San Jose State" and "How are those new jail cameras working out? I heard she bought them herself! Wow!" just based off of Wikipedia [1] and some news articles [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Smith

[2] http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/03/02/santa-clara-coun...

Yeah, that might work, as a social engineering tactic to get out of a ticket.

Uh, only unincorporated areas of Santa Clara County (and those few cities who subcontract law enforcement to the county, like Cupertino) fall under Smith's direct purview. Like most cities, Sunnyvale has its own P.D. (Department of Public Safety, in Sunnyvale's case -- combined Police and Fire).

That said, the jurisdiction of any given sworn law enforcement officer in CA is statewide, so any officer could pull you over regardless of what city you're in, theoretically.