By Police1 Staff
BATON ROUGE, La. — Video has surfaced of an incident from last April in which an officer pulled over a motorist he claimed was driving erratically and twice the posted speed limit, unaware that the driver was an off-duty police officer.
Officer David Stewart — who was off duty and outside his jurisdiction at the time — began pursuing a white pick-up truck when he noticed the driver going about 90 mph. The truck’s driver, Cpl. Brian L. Harrison, ignored the officer’s lights and siren for about a minute before pulling over, according to the Advocate.
“That’s what’s wrong with police officers like you,” Stewart can be heard saying to Harrison in the video, “You ought not be a police officer.”
Harrison was not cited. However, he did send an email to Stewart after the incident lecturing the officer for going “AWOL.”
“I understand you are new and want to pull everyone over but please … sometimes give it a rest,” Harrison wrote, according to the Advocate. “The best thing you could have done was get on I-12 and go to work.”
The spat prompted an internal investigation that led to verbal counseling for both officers.
Harrison apologized “for any inconvenience this incident may have caused to all involved,” in a letter to his supervisors. He acknowledged exceeding the speed limit and said he thought a colleague might have been playing a prank on him in trying to pull him over, according to the report.