A woman is heard racially abusing a Hispanic police officer in bodycam footage and repeatedly calling him a "murderer" after he pulled over in Los Angeles county.
The unidentified Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy was subjected to a tirade of abuse after he stopped the teacher for using her cell phone while driving in San Dimas with her son in the car.
The deputy sent the bodycam video to LA-based Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, who posted it on Twitter on Monday.
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) May 3, 2021
The motorist definitely wasn't 'being excellent' to others on her 'bogus journey' through the hometown of fictional time travellers Bill and Ted.
"The speed limit is 40 and I was going 38, so why are you harassing me?" she asks. Before the deputy can finish his answer, she says: "Because you're a murderer."
As the officer explains that it is an offense to use a phone while driving, she makes the excuse: "I started to record because you're a murderer."
"I wasn't on my phone, I was recording you because you scared me," the driver claims. When asked for her driver's license, she replies: "It's, it's at my apartment," adding: "I mistakenly left it at home."
"Can you call your supervisor please?" she asks, to which the Deputy replies he already has and that the superior is on his way. "Good, 'cos you're a murderer," the woman replies.
The woman again accuses the deputy of "harassing" her when he gives her a ticket for using her phone, which she again denied — claiming "You scared me and made me think you were gonna murder me."
"I'm sorry you feel that way" says the deputy. "It's not just a feeling, you're a murderer," she replies.
"I'm perfectly legal and I am a teacher, so there," the woman boasts as she finally produces a phone picture of her license. "Congratulations" says the deputy, to which she replies: "Murderer. You're a murderer." When he asks her to stop the camera shaking so he can read her name, she claims it's "because you're scaring me, you're threatening to kill me and my son" — the eighth time she made that accusation.
And when the deputy's supervisor arrives and explains again to the woman why she got a ticket, she calls the deputy a "Mexican racist."
"You're always gonna be a Mexican, you'll never be white, you know that, right? You'll never be white, which is what you really wanna be. You wanna be white so bad," she says as he walks away.
The LA Sheriff's Department (LASD) told Melugin the woman, who has a history of making false claims against deputies, had called the department to file a formal complaint with Internal Affairs.
He added that while the San Dimas station does not yet have bodycams to issue to officers, the deputy said he had bought his own "to protect himself on the job."
LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said he was "proud" of his deputy for staying calm and professional during the incident.
"She claims to be a teacher. I'm not so sure where she is teaching... but if she represents her profession, is that an indictment on her profession and the calibre of people?" Villanueva asked.
"You have one incident like George Floyd....but some people want to label the entire profession as if everyone was a Derek Chauvin. It shows you that bigotry, racism comes in all, colours and all ages — that's proof of that right there. If you want to call all of the deputies murderers, unfortunately, you are doing the exact same thing you're accusing other people of doing against your own kind."
Fox News host Laura Ingraham tweeted that the driver's racist rant against an officer merely trying to keep the roads safe was a result of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) May 4, 2021
