A video that’s going viral this week shows the Florida state attorney, Aramis Ayala, being pulled over by police before she asks why they pulled her over.
When they asked her what agency she works for, she replied: “I am the state attorney.”
“Thank you, your tag didn’t come back, never seen that before,” the officer said. “We’re good now. 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.”
She then asked why the officers ran her tags. The video of the incident, captured on an officer’s body camera, took place last month—but it was released on July 12.
“Oh, we run tags through all the time, whether it’s a traffic light and that sort of stuff, that’s how we figure out if cars are stolen and that sort of thing,” the unnamed officer said.
Ayala then asks if they had business cards, prompting the two officers to write down their names.
Officers told her that they pulled her over, in part, because her “windows are really dark. I don’t have a tint measure but that’s another reason for the stop.”
In a statement to the Orlando Weekly, Ayala said that she was pulled over after leaving Florida A&M University Law School, where she taught a class.
She added that there was a significant amount of “misinformation” after the video was released, “including the filing of a lawsuit, which is not true.”
“I violated no laws,” she said, adding that her license plate was “properly registered,” while the “tint was in no way a violation of Florida law.”
She added that the traffic stop appears to be consistent with Florida state law. “I look forward to sitting down to have an open dialogue with the Chief of Orlando Police Department regarding how this incident impacts that goal,” she said.
