A police officer in Buckeye, Arizona is under investigation after telling an immigrant that he had pulled over on a traffic stop, “If you do something, I will kill you.” As reported by Fox 10 Phoenix , the man was an immigrant and the unnamed Buckeye officer pulled him over and began interrogating him on whether the man had any weapons or drugs in the car. The officer continued threatening the man throughout the traffic stop using both English and Spanish.
The man, Teodulu Sanchez, began to record the stop on his phone and later uploaded the exchange to YouTube with help from the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, who have taken up Sanchez’s cause in the matter.
The Buckeye Police Department first issued a statement that the officer was following protocol as there was a call that a man driving a car was trafficking narcotics and possibly had a gun that matched the description of the immigrant. Police protocol in instances of suspected weapons usually results in multiple units handling the traffic stop, yet the Buckeye officer was clearly alone. Now, according to ABC 15 , the Buckeye Police Department is running a full investigation.
Buckeye Police chief is meeting with a man who says an officer threatened to shoot him during a traffic stop.
— Navideh Forghani (@NavidehABC15) October 13, 2014
The immigrant driver is undocumented and in the country illegally. The man is in the process of being deported back to Mexico, according to the Fox 10 Phoenix news story. The Buckeye police officer did not have a camera equipped, as the department is just now starting to implement the devices on its officers. Sanchez was detained and released, though no narcotics or weapons were found in the car. This incident is the most recent in a long line of questionable stops made by police. As reported on The Inquisitr , a cop in Indiana recently broke a driver’s window and used a Taser on him during a routine traffic stop.
Do you think the police officer went too far by threatening to kill Sanchez? Does “innocent until proven guilty” still matter in this country?
