A police officer in Montgomery, Alabama has resigned after a video of him racing a local motorcycle rider went viral. The unidentified officer was captured on camera by the rider, Lawrence Lee Spillers, accelerating hard away from a green light after being asked, "do you wanna race?" The officer, riding a Harley-Davidson, responds, "I got turbo", before blasting off as the light turns green. The two later race away again at a later set of lights.
However, many feel the incident has been blown out of proportion--and the rider who filmed the officer has started a petition gathering support to have the former Montgomery officer reinstated. "We posted [the video] thinking, you know, it was something fun, something you don't run across every day and that's why we did it" he told WSFA, adding that his intentions were never to get the cop into trouble.
Montgomery Police Chief Kevin Murphy disagrees, calling the footage "upsetting" and saying that it doesn't reflect the organization as a whole. Murphy says that you don't even need to break the posted limit to partake in illegal drag racing--just accelerating harder to pass other traffic. "Police officers should obey the law, not violate them," he added.
While the actions could be considered foolish for a police officer--particularly one caught on camera--we suspect that few will see what all the fuss is about. Neither reaches excessive speeds--Spillers' speedometer is visible the whole time--nor continues their "race" over anything more than a short distance. While we certainly wouldn't advocate street racing, we'd all be in trouble if accelerating quickly was considered a crime...
The officer's response? Pragmatic: "If I could start over I would have never done what I did."
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