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By Harriet Sinclair
Associate Editor
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A video that shows the moment police in Orlando pull over Florida's first African American state attorney has gone viral. The two officers did not appear to have a clear explanation for why they ran the plates of Aramis Ayala, initially telling her the car's tag did not come back, but faltering over an explanation for why they ran her plates in the first place.
Ayala was pulled over by the cops in Orlando on June 19, with the awkward footage from one of the officer's body camera having been released recently.
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As she handed over her license, the officer asked Ayala which agency she worked for, to which she responded: "I'm the state attorney."
The officer immediately launched into an explanation as to why the vehicle was pulled over, telling Ayala: "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."
Asked why they decided to run the plate, the officer responded: "Oh, we run tags through all the time, whether it's a traffic light and that sort stuff, that's how we figure out if cars are stolen and that sort of thing."
"Also, the windows are really dark, I don't have a tint measure but that's another reason for the stop," he added, as the attorney general looked unimpressed with his explanation, asking the officers for their own details.
Posting on her Twitter page, in what appeared to be a reference to the stop, Ayala wrote: "Politicizing justice is an injustice itself."
Ayala is a well-known state attorney, having recently announced she would not pursue the death penalty in a high-profile murder case (or other cases in the 9th Judicial Circuit), prompting Florida Governor Rick Scott to remove a number of murder cases from her office, in turn prompting Ayala to sue Scott.
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