While we love when law enforcement acts appropriately, helping to keep communities safe, the sad truth is sometimes they’re the ones breaking the law. We’ve covered before police who crash constantly, drive drunk, or think speed limits don’t apply to them. Now a report out of California alleges a sheriff has a speeding problem and keeps getting pulled over for it.
Watch a cop try to catch a speeding Dodge Charger but crash into another car instead.
According to KION, Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto has been pulled over repeatedly for violating the speed limit. Their investigation revealed at least three separate occasions where the top cop of her agency was pulled over by California Highway Patrol in King City for excessive speed.
Now here’s the real kicker: she just got a warning each time. How many regular citizens would be so fortunate?
We know this probably doesn’t shock too many readers, and that’s sad. Law enforcement shouldn’t be above the law. Obviously, when they’re responding to an emergency they might need to speed. But they shouldn’t be speeding simply because they think the rules they enforce don’t apply to them.
In the first traffic stop, the sheriff was clocked by CHP going 95 mph. About six months after that, in the second know CHP traffic stop she was told she was doing 95, again. You can’t tell what she says in the dashcam footage, but the officer asks something about her running Code 3, which is law enforcement lingo for lights and sirens. She responds about her vehicle not being “upgraded” yet.
That second time the CHP officer warned her that a third offense would go differently. And yet it apparently didn’t.
Sheriff Nieto told a KION reporter she wasn’t speeding in the third incident. In the dashcam footage she refused to identify herself to the officer, saying she would only do so to his supervisor. Once the supervisor arrived, she was off the hook and the officer was caught on camera showing relief he didn’t have the citation paperwork already filled out.
CHP told KION it can’t talk about Sheriff Nieto’s traffic stops. That doesn’t help with the perception not everything is being handled as it should.
Image via Monterey County Sheriff’s Office/Facebook
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