Video Shows Orlando Police Pulling Over Florida State Attorney

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/us/florida-state-attorney-police-stop.html

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Footage from a body camera worn by a police officer in Orlando, Fla., shows him approaching a car that he pulled over.

“What agency you with?” he asks after he looks at the driver’s license.

The driver replies, “I’m the state attorney.”

The officer then explains that her license plate “didn’t come back to anything” after he checked it on a computer. He’d never seen that before and that was why she was stopped, he says, adding, “but we’re good now.”

The polite but somewhat awkward exchange happened on June 19 at 8:15 p.m. between the officer and the driver, Aramis D. Ayala, who is the state attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit in Florida and chief prosecutor in Orlando.

After public records requests from a television news station and Ms. Ayala, the police department released a video of the stop, which this week drew nationwide attention. A version posted by the Orlando Police Department on Wednesday has been viewed more than 300,000 times so far.

It also gained coverage in The Tampa Bay Times and in The Miami Herald, which had the headline: “A black driver was pulled over for ‘really dark’ windows. It was the state attorney.”

In the video, when Ms. Ayala asked why her license plate had been checked in the first place, the officer, said: “Oh, we run tags all the time. Whether it’s a traffic light and that sort of stuff.”

He said it was a routine way to check whether a car was stolen. Then he added: “Also, the windows are really dark. I don’t have a tint measure, but that’s another reason for the stop.”

At the mention of the dark windows, Ms. Ayala, who is black, smiled slightly.

Ms. Ayala said in a statement released Wednesday that she was stopped after she left the law school at Florida A&M University College of Law, where she had taught that night.

“To be clear, I violated no laws,” she said in the statement. “The license plate, while confidential, was and remains properly registered. The tint was in no way a violation of Florida law.”

The video has prompted a “flood of misinformation,” including an inaccurate claim that a lawsuit was filed, Ms. Ayala said in her statement.

She said the stop appeared to be consistent with Florida law, adding, “My goal is to have a constructive and mutually respectful relationship between law enforcement and the community.” Ms. Ayala said she looked forward to having “an open dialogue” with the police chief, John W. Mina, “regarding how this incident impacts that goal.”

The chief has discussed meeting with her next week, the department said.

The officer who wore the body camera and another officer seen on the video leaning into her passenger window during the stop were not identified.

In a statement, the Police Department said officers on patrol routinely check license plates and that Ms. Ayala’s license plate “did not come back as registered to any vehicle.”

“As you can see in the video,” the statement continued, “the window tint was dark, and officers would not have been able to tell who, or how many people, were in the vehicle.”

The department said no complaint had been filed about the stop.

Beverlye Neal, president of the Orange County chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. in Florida, said on Thursday she had written a letter to the chief about the video and had invited him to meet with her executive board.

“We need to give him an opportunity to respond,” she said.

Ms. Ayala, the first black prosecutor elected in Florida, made headlines in March when she announced she would not pursue the death penalty. She said it had failed as a deterrent and that it did nothing to protect law enforcement officers.

She faced backlash from officials, including the state attorney general, Pam Bondi, who called the decision a “blatant neglect of duty.” Gov. Rick Scott issued an executive order removing Ms. Ayala from a case involving an Orlando police officer’s death.

The Tampa Bay Times reported in March that the Orange County Sheriff’s Office was investigating after she received two threatening and racist letters in the mail, one of which included a noose.