The clip shows part of bodycam footage of a traffic stop conducted on a blue sedan.
A cop approaches the driver’s side window to talk with the Black driver, who points out that he saw the officer following him.
The officer states that he was in the area when he came upon the driver’s car. He tells the driver he stopped him because of the dark tint on his front window, adding that he saw his car parked on the wrong side of a street.
“The reason why I stopped you is because of the tint,” the officer said, pointing to the front window. “And when you went to Davis Loop, you parked on the wrong side of the road.”
The driver clarified that the area where he was parked was his grandmother’s house.
“I can’t park out there?” the motorist asks. “That was in the grass.”
“The reason why I stopped you was because of the tint,” the officer states.
Instead of just issuing a citation for the tint, the cop shifts gears and asks whether the driver has weapons in his car.
“Do you have any weapons in here?” the cop asks.
“No sir,” the motorist is heard stating.
“Okay. Can I talk to you outside?” the cop asks.
The video then cuts to the moment the driver is outside the vehicle as the cop continues with the same line of questioning.
“Anything inside the vehicle? At all? There’s nothing gonna be in the car?” the officer asks.
“No sir,” the driver states multiple times.
“You mind if I look through it?” the officer asks.
The clip cuts again to the moment the motorist is on his cellphone, notifying someone that police officers are trying to search his car.
After that, the video cuts again to the moment a woman who appears to be a family member or a friend of the driver arrives at the scene.
“Y’all just so full of it,” the woman says.
The cop begins to explain to the woman why he stopped the young man, this time pointing to the parking concern rather than the tint issue.
“So I stopped him because he parked on the wrong side of the road,” the officer states.
This prompts several questions from the woman and the driver, who ask why the officer didn’t conduct the traffic stop at the driver’s grandmother’s home and if the parking issue was the problem.
“Why you didn’t stop right there if that was the problem? Why did you pull off?” the woman asks.
“Because I have to call it out on the radio,” the officer replies.
“You could have stopped right there and called it off,” she responds. “Y’all full of it.”
Video of the traffic stop garnered more than 300,000 views on the Instagram page @carsofmagiccity since it was posted on Aug. 29, but it’s unclear where it was taken and when. Thousands of commenters estimated that it was a case of racial profiling where the driver’s rights were nearly violated.
“Traffic stops are not investigations. This needs to stop. Issue the ticket and move on,” one person noted.
“Yes he can write him a ticket but asking to search the car without reasonable cause is wrong,” another comment reads.
