Law enforcement officers have to make snap judgements all the time, which is one of the reasons the job is so tough. And while they often get things right, that’s not always the case. Dashcam footage from Arkansas State Police show a trooper chase down a speeding Dodge Charger that was going the opposite direction, but some people think he pulled over the wrong Charger.
Watch a hit-and-run suspect play victim when the cops arrive.
We see in the footage that the trooper crosses the grassy median as he sees the speeding Mopar. That gives us a fairly good look at the offending vehicle. But by the time he’s turned all the way around, the Charger is far down the highway.
Pushing his cruiser to well over 100 mph, he gives chase, lights and sirens both going. As the trooper continues the pursuit, he notes on the radio what he saw was a “Battleship Gray Charger.” As he keeps driving, at times pushing to over 120 mph, the trooper seems to lock onto a car in the distance. Thanks to the video quality, we can’t quite tell what it is he sees on the horizon.
But the pursuit lasts for almost eight minutes, there’s no doubt the trooper lost sight of the vehicle he thinks is the one he originally saw. The highway curves repeatedly, making it impossible to keep an eye on his pursuit target. He even admits that fact to dispatch.
Lo and behold, once the trooper rolls into a town he sees a gray Dodge Charger traveling the opposite direction, flips a U-turn, and proceeds to pull it over. Basically an open-and-shut case, right? After all, the trooper says it’s “the exact same color, exact same build” so that’s just a smoking run, right?
It’s interesting to note the person who was supposedly running before doesn’t just punch it and take off upon seeing the trooper. If you had been running from the cops just a few minutes before and you saw one of them with lights and sirens coming the opposite direction like before, wouldn’t you just run again? Instead, this person pulls into a parking lot like everything is normal, stopping for the trooper without any trouble.
The trooper asks where the driver, a woman, was coming from. When she tries to explain he cuts her off and tells her he doesn’t care, showing he’s clearly pissed. He goes off on a long rant to her, even though she isn’t resisting. Is that anger clouding his judgment? Or is he justified in being annoyed at the suspect not being honest?
Notice during the pursuit there are a lot of connecting roads the suspect could’ve shot down to lose the fuzz. Did the speeder stay on the highway after seeing the ASP car in the median or did the suspect take a different route in hope of throwing the trooper off?
Also, people are noting the difference in side mirror caps. Are they really the same car?
Was this a case of an ASP trooper who couldn’t admit when a suspect slipped away, doggedly pursuing until he found another car that looked the same to him? Or was this woman trying to pull a fast one on law enforcement? Watch the video and let us know what you think.
Follow The Auto Wire on Google News.
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.