Video shows Florida state attorney questioning why she was pulled over
A Florida prosecutor embroiled in a high-level dispute with the state's governor over the death penalty was pulled over by police officers in June in a video that has since gone viral.
State Attorney Aramis Ayala was stopped by police in Orlando, Florida, on June 19 shortly after 8 p.m., CBS affiliate WTSP-TV reports. Ayala is the first black state attorney elected in Florida history.
Body camera footage released by the Orlando Police Department shows an officer explaining why they pulled Ayala over after running her license plates through a database.
In the video, Ayala hands the officer her driver's license as another looks on through the passenger window, telling the officers, "I'm the state's attorney."
"Thank you. Your tag didn't come back -- never seen that before, but we're good now," the officer says in the video. "We ran the tag, I've never seen it before with a Florida tag, it didn't come back to anything, so that's the reason for the stop."
"What was the tag run for?" Alaya asks.
"Oh, we run tags all the time," the officer replies. "Whether it's for traffic lights, that sort of stuff. That's how we figure out if cars are stolen, that sort of thing."
The officer also mentioned the tint of Ayala's windows to explain why they pulled her over. Ayala asks the officers for their cards, and the officer on the driver side writes down his name on a slip of paper.
Ayala, a Democrat, sued Florida's Republican Gov. Rick Scott over Scott's decision to remove Ayala from 24 murder cases after Ayala announced she would not seek the death penalty for a suspect accused of killing a police officer.
In a statement to the Tampa Bay Times about being pulled over, Ayala said her goal is to "have a constructive and mutually respectful relationship between law enforcement and the community."
"To be clear, I violated no laws," Ayala said. "The license plate, while confidential, was and remains properly registered. The tint was in no way a violation of Florida law. Although the traffic stop appears to be consistent with Florida law."