A black driver was pulled over for ‘really dark’ windows

A black driver was pulled over for ‘really dark’ windows. It was the state attorney.

Orlando police pulled over a white Ford Fusion with tinted windows. Inside was Aramis Ayala, Florida’s first and only African American state attorney — a fact that the two officers who stopped her apparently didn’t know.

As one officer approaches Ayala’s car, she already has her driver’s license in her hands, according to body-camera footage of the traffic stop.

“What agency are you with?” the officer asks Ayala as he examines her license. “I’m a state attorney,” she responds.

“State attorney,” the officer says quickly, appearing to bring the traffic stop to an abrupt end. “Alright, thank you. Your tag didn’t come back. Never seen that before. … We’re good now.”

Ayala appears confused, prompting the officer to explain further that they had run her Florida license plate tag and that it had returned nothing.

Ayala presses him: “What was the tag run for?”

“Oh, we run tags all the time,” the officer says. “That’s how we figure out if, you know, cars are stolen and that sort of thing. Also, the windows were really dark. I don’t have a tint measure, but that’s another reason for the stop.”

After mention of the dark windows, Ayala smiles slightly and asks for the officers’ business cards.

Media outlets published body-camera footage of the stop and questioned whether Ayala was racially profiled.

Orlando Police Department defended the officers’ action as being lawful, “As you can see in the video, the window tint was dark, and officers would not have been able to tell who, or how many people, were in the vehicle.”

In March, Ayala caused a stir by announcing that she would no longer seek the death penalty in cases handled by her office, including the case where a man accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend, gunning down an Orlando police officer and triggering a massive manhunt.

This prompted Gov. Rick Scott (R) to reassign all of Ayala’s murder cases to another prosecutor.

She then sued Florida Governor Rick Scott. This case reached Florida Supreme Court judges last month.