Irregular traffic stop: Miami cop pulled over for speeding

A series of videos showing the stop illustrates how citizen videos of police don't just have to focus on use-of-force.

It never got as far as a citizens' arrest, but it was certainly a citizens' stern-telling-off.

A series of cellphone videos posted to YouTube on Friday showing a civilian pulling over a Miami police officer for speeding have gone viral, illustrating that public scrutiny over police practices extends beyond their use of force to traffic violations as well.

Considering the role-reversal, the traffic stop was surprisingly routine. The offender pulled over, expressed surprise that he was speeding, then apologized and promised to slow down in the future.

In the first video a woman – who identifies herself as the driver, though her face is never seen – describes how she’s been following an officer who was driving "about 100 miles an hour" and had not responded to her efforts to get his attention. In the second video she manages to pull him over, and in the third video the officer has approached her window.

"The reason I pulled you over today," the woman said, "is because I saw you, since Miller Drive when you were first jumping onto the [highway], and you were pushing 90 miles an hour."

"I just wanted to know, what’s the emergency?" she asked.

"Um, I don't know how fast I was going," the officer replied. "But I can tell you this: I'm on my way to work right now. I don't believe I was speeding."

He added that he had pulled over because he though she might have an emergency, and asked if everything was fine.

"Everything's fine," the woman said. "It's your speeding."

"Well, then I apologize," the officer replied. "I'll be sure to slow down."

Public scrutiny of the police has heightened in recent months after a series of high-profile incidents where officers have used lethal force. Some officers have complained that they have been affected by more citizens videotaping them on the job, a phenomenon FBI Director James Comey gave legitimacy to last October.

"Nobody says it on the record, nobody says it in public, but police and elected officials are quietly saying it themselves," he said at the time, adding that officers in one big city precinct told him: "We feel like we're under siege, and we don't feel much like getting out of our cars."

A dozen officers were charged in fatal shootings last year – the highest number in a decade – but prosecutions are still rare, and experts also insist the officer transgressions more often involve the kind seen in Miami than the use of lethal force. Researchers at Bowling Green State University found that, between 2005 and 2010, there were 782 cases where police officers were arrested for drunk driving. In 2013 the Florida Sun Sentinel won a Pulitzer Prize for an investigation into speeding by off-duty police officers.

In response to Friday's videos, Miami-Dade's police director Juan Perez said the department will investigate the incident "once the officer and the citizen are identified," the Miami Herald reported.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Irregular traffic stop: Miami cop pulled over for speeding
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2016/0201/Irregular-traffic-stop-Miami-cop-pulled-over-for-speeding
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe