No, YOU’RE under arrest!

Impersonating a federal police officer is a crime, but if the badge you use to do it isn’t “substantially identical” to the real thing, simply having the fake emblem is not a separate offense, a federal judge in Greenbelt ruled.

The issue came up in the case of John Alvin Roe, a security guard at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who decided he’d step off campus and try his hand at highway patrol. He picked the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, which runs right by the Greenbelt research lab, as the site of his personal experiment.

Roe’s little adventure — wearing a “tactical police-type vest,” carrying a semiautomatic hand gun and pulling over motorists in his white Crown Vic equipped with emergency lights and radio scanner — was cut short when he tried to pull over an undercover state trooper. The trooper reported him to the U.S. Park Police, which legally patrols the road.

The U.S. Park Police officer stopped Roe, and according to the opinion posted on the federal court’s Web site Monday, Roe appeared to go for his gun.

The officer did likewise.

At that point, Roe called out “federal officer” and “federal police officer” and presented his rather thorough phony badge, on the face of which were the U.S. Seal, an eagle, American flags, and arches that read “NASA” and “Police.”

Knowing NASA has no police force, the officer arrested Roe. He was later indicted for impersonating an officer and possessing a false badge.

However, to have violated the law prohibiting possession of a false badge, Roe’s badge must be have been a “colorable imitation” of the insignia he and his colleagues legitimately sport.

After detailing the differences between the true and false credentials and scouring scattered and largely unhelpful court decisions from around the country and even Black’s Law Dictionary for guidance on the meaning of “colorable imitation,” U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte acquitted Roe of the second charge.

“[I]t is no federal crime … merely to possess an official-looking badge that is not substantially identical to a truly official badge, regardless of the deceit that might ensue,” Messitte wrote.

The jury found him guilty of the impersonating charge.

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