Florida Cops Pulled Over Black State Prosecutor for 'Really Dark' Windows

Back in June, Orlando police pulled over Aramis Ayala—Florida's first black state attorney—as she made her way home from Florida A&M University, where she'd been teaching a law class. Rather than speeding, making an illegal turn, or having a broken taillight, Ayala was stopped for her tinted windows and license tags, according to body cam footage the Orlando PD released Wednesday.

In the video, the officer who stopped Ayala said he'd switched on his lights after a search for her license plate tag number "didn't come back to anything," the Miami Herald reports. She was driving a state-issued vehicle, whose tag numbers are confidential—meaning they don't show up as registered to a vehicle when police run them, CNN reports.

"What was the tag run for?" Ayala asked.

"Oh we run tags through all the time, whether it's a traffic light and that sort of stuff, that's how we figure out if cars are stolen and that sort of thing," the cop replied. "Also, the windows are really dark. I don't have a tint measure, but that's another reason for the stop."

It's a pretty awkward encounter—one that's apparently been viewed over 2 million times online, according to Ayala. Once the unidentified officer realizes who she is, and has nothing to cite her for, he immediately backpedals and eventually lets her go after telling her to "have a nice day."

"To be clear, I violated no laws," Ayala said in a statement. "The license plate, while confidential, was and remains properly registered. The tint was in no way a violation of Florida law."

Although Ayala hasn't filed a complaint and has said that the stop was "consistent with Florida law," she's hoping to discuss the run-in with Orlando's chief of police, a meeting the department told the New York Times is slated for next week.

"The officers stated the tag did not come back as registered to any vehicle," a spokesman for the Orlando Police Department told the Tampa Bay Times. "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."

Last month's traffic stop is just one of many controversial incidents that's plagued Ayala this year. Back in March, she announced she wouldn't pursue the death penalty in response to a case about an accused cop-killer, drawing the ire of several political powerhouses in Florida—Governor Rick Scott and State Attorney General Pam Bondi among them.

In response, Scott quickly replaced Ayala with a special prosecutor willing to pursue the death penalty in the trial of Markeith Loyd. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Ayala's been receiving racially charged threats ever since. In late April, someone reportedly sent her a noose in the mail.

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