Officers must make split-second judgments, which is part of what makes the job so difficult, and they don’t always get it right. Dashcam footage from Arkansas State Police shows a trooper chasing down a speeding Dodge Charger, raising the question of whether it was the right one.
Misidentifying a fleeing vehicle during a fast-moving pursuit is an easy mistake to make. The case highlights the challenges officers face in the heat of the moment and the consequences when a snap judgment may have missed the mark.
I am going to say this off rip the Trooper lied on video saying that he was keeping up with the Charger but he never even came close to keeping up with the Charger at all and he called it in to Dispatch and let he or she know that he lost sight of the Charger and the first town he pull into the first Charger he sees once he bust a uturned and pulls the Charger over the Charger stops at a stop sign and it didn’t even dawn on him to think if someone was just speeding from Law Enforcement with lights and sirens don’t you think the speedster would take after seeing lights and sirens coming at him and that young lady is being so nice and cordial and being very respectful and professional the Trooper on the other hand was being rude and angry and not coming to his senses and just admitted that he was wrong the because the young lady showed him all her previous locations as proof the didn’t want to use that as proof because it doesn’t show a time line but if he takes the time to click on it will show more detail if he just hold it down and click the three dots and click detail of the content and she shouldn’t be charged with the marijuana because he stop the wrong person and he wouldn’t have known she had the weed in her possession and plus he stated that he is not going to give her a ticket from fleeing from because he just basically saying and admitting that he is unsure if he stop the right Charger or not but he wants to get her on the weed and clearly he can’t do that because first he clearly doesn’t have probable cause to stop her or prove that she committed a crime or even seen her committed a crime in the act and he doesn’t know if she is about to commit a crime the Trooper suspicious can’t be based upon hear say his suspicious has to be based upon facts and not assumptions I think he has the wrong person
I took screenshots of the car in the beginning and the car that go pulled over. I place them side by side. The cars are not even the same color. The first car is charcoal. The pulled over car is gray. So unless the lady got her car repainted in those eight minutes of pursuit, the cop got the wrong car.
Taylor Elkins ASP. What a twit.
Any idea how this was finally resolved?
While I’m not condoning speeding – or any other law breaking, mind you – the cop in this instance morphed from law enforcement officer into fiction writer. As he admitted, he lost sight of the Charger – as his dash cam footage clearly shows. He saw another vehicle several miles down the road similar in appearance to the one he was chasing – so what? He had no license plate number, no description of the driver, and no continuity in the dash cam footage between the chase and the arrest. While I suspect that the woman was indeed guilty of speeding, the evidence – similar looking vehicles – was way too flimsy for a conviction. My question would be, if she were indeed the speeder, why stay on the main highway after she had successfully eluded police? She was in town. I would have driven down a side street, parked in a parking lot, and gone into a store for a while till the coast was clear. I hope the judge threw it out of court. The marijuana possession is another issue, as med is legal in Arkansas while rec is not. There the situation gets foggy. Did the cop have probable cause to pull the woman over – just because she was driving a similar looking vehicle? It could be argued otherwise. Everything about this whole scenario as it played out is clear as mud.