We don’t know if we should laugh or cry with this strange story that took place in South Carolina on January 18 and was captured on film by a police trooper’s dashboard camera.
It all started when an unnamed South Carolina police trooper stopped the Mayor of Norway, Jim Preacher, for driving 70mph in a 50mph zone in an unmarked Dodge Charger police car. Let us note that the Charger previously belonged to the town’s police chief before the division was disbanded in August 2011 due to lack of funds.
The trooped handed a four-point, $185 fine to Preacher, who wasn’t pleased at all and decided to return the favor… The Mayor immediately made a U-turn and turned on his lights and sirens to stop the trooper!
“Can I see your driver’s license,” Preacher asked the trooper. The police officer gave him his license and asked the Mayor why he stopped him. “Are you familiar with interfering with a police officer?” asked Preacher.
The Mayor told the trooper that he was working as the town’s constable and was conducting an investigation into an armed robbery at a gas station. He then headed back to his car with the trooper’s license and patrol car registration in hand where he spent the next 23 minutes!
In the meantime, the trooper called his supervisor. “I don’t know what he pulled me for; he—I don’t know. He’s back there now, I don’t know what he’s doing,” the trooped is heard saying.
His boss then asks to talk to Preacher who tells him, “I’m going to file a formal complaint, I’m going to take him back to my office and issue him a ticket for interfering with a police officer”.
Preacher added that the trooper should have given him a “professional courtesy” and let him go without a ticket.
The dashcam footage ends with Preacher telling the trooper, “Son, you got a lot to learn.”
The story, of course, doesn’t end there because like you, the South Carolina Department of Public Safety and the State Law Enforcement Division (SLEP) also wondered if the Mayor had the right to stop the trooper.
According to a news report from WISTV, SLEP is looking into Preacher’s claims that he was acting as Norway’s “chief constable,” a title that had been given to him on January 9, 2012, in a council meeting, and has asked the help of the State Attorney General’s office.
The case is still pending…
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