Is this what you get for driving a Charger in the wrong city?
If you drive a Dodge Charger or any other vehicle known by police to be commonly stolen, it’s possible you might be held at gunpoint like an Arkansas family was in Frisco, Texas. The traumatizing experience has left many people wondering how police could make such a critical error.
Did an Arkansas trooper pull over the wrong Dodge Charger? You be the judge.
According to an official press release from Fisco Police Department, on the morning of July 23, an officer saw a black Dodge Charger with out of state plates leave a hotel parking lot. That might not sound suspicious to you, but the city had seen a spike in burglaries and car thefts with Chargers specifically targeted so everyone in the department was on alert.
When the officer ran the plate, he accidentally entered it as being from Arizona instead of Arkansas. That in turn produced an “incorrect registration return” which the officer interpreted as confirmation that he was possibly dealing with a stolen vehicle, so he initiated a traffic stop.
Frisco Police Department has released bodycam footage of the incident. You can hear the officer order the mother, who was driving, out of the Dodge and to lift up her shirt to show she didn’t have a weapon tucked in her waistband. At one point after taking the driver into custody the officer threatens to maybe shoot anyone in the Charger “if they reach in that car” because the driver disclosed there was a gun in the glovebox.
The officer whose bodycam we’re watching seems to not be too adept at a lot of policing things during the stop. We wonder how long he’s been on the force and if that played any role in his wrongly inputting the license plate info.
For example, at one point in the video when he’s providing cover for officers who are approaching the driver, he rolls down the window on his open door, sticks his right arm with his service pistol through the open window, reaches his other arm around the outside edge of the door, then immediately moves around the door like he’s not sure what cover to take.
His behavior is pretty bizarre and makes us wonder how much action they see in Frisco and what kind of training officers receive. He also seems to struggle with basic communication with other officers on the scene.
There are many, many other oddities about his behavior, like when he yells for more officers as a young boy walks backwards toward his cruiser. We’ve never seen anything like it, to be honest, other than maybe Barney Fife.
Once a sergeant arrived on the scene he caught the mistake and “immediately ordered officers to ‘stand down’” ending the incident, the department said. You can see that play out in the video. As police approach, the husband and child are crying inside the Charger, making us want to cry while boiling our blood simultaneously. Completely unacceptable! For what it’s worth, the other cops on the scene look like they want to crawl under a rock. We bet the officer who made the mistake is super popular with his coworkers now.
While it’s not entirely fair to judge an entire police force based on the mistake of one officer, this incident was shockingly bad. We don’t know how the system they use to run plates works and so can’t say for sure how an input error like this could’ve happened. Frisco police say they’re reviewing what led to the mistake so they can take steps to keep it from happening again. We sincerely hope they do because no innocent person deserves to be put through this kind of ordeal.
Watch the bodycam footage for yourself here. We haven’t cringed this much in a while, so fair warning.
+ There are no comments
Add yours