[jmiwhite]

Confusing title - to add some clarification from the article:

> He's a federal police officer at the Marine Corps Air Station-Miramar in San Diego.

Ronnie, the male passenger is employed as a Federal police officer, but his wife (driving) does not have her employment specified, nor are they driving an official vehicle or on Federal business. He also sounds more worried about losing his job than having his employer go to bat for him:

> "It makes me angry that someone would attack my character because not only do they attack my character, but that could cost me my job," Ronnie said.

[meric]

If there were two tiers of citizenship - the police and the non-police - and the former has an implicit right to confiscate assets from the latter, of course anyone would worry about losing their police job.

[ZanyProgrammer]

Even off duty cops (from different jurisdictions) aren't immune.

[newjersey]

>> Watts is also off the road, but by her own choosing. She remains with the Florida Highway Patrol but no longer looks for speeders because she is afraid her fellow officers would no longer back her up in an emergency.

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/11/26/fhp-trooper-donna-watts...

even on duty officers doing their jobs aren't immune... if you don't follow the blue code of silence, the blue code will stalk you.

[kls]

Miami PD is one of the most corrupt departments in FL. My wife was harassed and ticketed by a fat cop who got out of the car smoking a cigar and stunk of alcohol with gold chains around his neck.

Earlier she had pulled into a parking garage that was mislabeled and scrapped the roof of the truck. The attendant called their boss who called their insurance, who said to get a police report and they would cover it. She got a ticket for reckless driving. Thankfully the attendant stayed on the scene the whole time, because my wife got the sense that the cop was alluding to her negotiating her way out of such a hefty ticket.

Fortunately my wife's friend (who we where visiting) is very good friends with the chief of the Hollywood PD and made a call, who then made a call to Miami PD, long story short a supervisor came out, ripped up the ticket apologized to my wife, wrote the police report about the garage and left, but before he did he told her it would be best if this where the end of the incident. Nothing was ever said or done about the other officer.

[triplesec]

I'm glad your wife beat that corruption, but sad that it took more corruption to do it: connections. This doesn't help the 99.9% other people.

[kls]

Agreed it is a shame that one has to have connections to avoid transgressions that should not happen in the first place. I was thankful for those connections at the time but very uneasy about the whole situation. The lesson learned is that we avoid Miami, which is difficult given that we live in the Florida Keys and it sits directly in our path to the mainland.

[LordKano]

I hadn't heard of this case before but it'd not a surprise to me.

It's completely tangential but I have taken great delight in the reaction of people to Making a Murderer.

I have talked to people who are in absolute disbelief that police officer can and do act that way. I tell them that they're only surprised because they haven't been paying attention.