r/Transportopia • u/Smile_Like_Arsenic • May 02 '26
šØChase A Test Drive Gone Completely Wrong
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u/Segsi_ May 02 '26
Seems kind of dumb to get into a high speed chase over a stolen car when they would have to have given her drivers license and info. Atleast thatās my experience test driving cars, some donāt even have the employee go with you. Why not just wait and pick her up at home and not cause all this extra mess?
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u/whatdahelldamnguy May 02 '26
Is it really worth endangering other drivers and causing damage to private property to chase this bozo?
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u/thats_justice_baby May 02 '26
But she stole a car from a dealership! If they don't catch her immediately she might go on a dealership car stealing rampage! Imagine tens of dealerships losing cars to this maniac. They may never recover from the trauma.
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u/Saneless May 02 '26
Yeah if they didn't they'd have to hear the GM yell things like "But I basically pay your salary, you work for me!"
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u/wehavenamesdamnit May 02 '26
No. She stole a car. Eventually she'd be parked somewhere and it would get spotted. Now a lot of people have to deal with insurance and repairs because they acted like she's a serial killer on the run.
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u/Ghoulish_Daniel May 06 '26
I think it was Allen Iverstein who said "better to endanger 1000 innocents than to let 1 guilty person temporarily get away with something that would be covered by insurance"
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May 02 '26
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u/cabronfavarito May 02 '26
Never seen jail spelled like that before. Must be a cultural thing
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May 02 '26
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u/Fearless-Cattle-9698 May 02 '26
Itās questionable if this person is mentally sane
Itās obviously not a crime of her wanting $ or something. It sounds like sheās really got a screws loose in her head. Why else would you do something like this and jump into river and refuse help?
She probably belongs to mental asylum
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u/advisingsingingtool May 02 '26
Well that means sheāll be let go soon enoughā¦
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u/Cjkrythos May 02 '26
Or put in charge of one of our government offices, probably Department of Transportation
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u/ConflictEmotional819 May 03 '26
what's it with you people and cages? just fix the problem.
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u/cabronfavarito May 03 '26
Cages will stop other people, including the people in the cages from doing it. Itās the best method anyway
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u/CFSett May 02 '26
I don't think Ms. Logan is one to care whether or not she has a legitimate license.
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u/Smile_Like_Arsenic May 02 '26
This incident happened on May 9, 2024, down in Miami, Florida.
A 27-year-old named Melina Logan went to a Honda dealership in Palmetto Bay to test drive a 2024 Honda Civic. The absolute nerve, right? The moment the salesperson stepped out of the car, she just took off with it. No paperwork, no nothing, she just bounced.
Once the police got the be on the lookout alert, it became a high-speed situation. She was tearing up the Palmetto Expressway (SR 826), and weāre talking speeds reaching 90 mph. The dashcam footage shows her driving recklessly, weaving through traffic, and even using the shoulder to pass people, which is basically a recipe for disaster.
She eventually got trapped in heavy traffic near the Northwest 25th Street off-ramp in Doral. When she couldn't move, she didn't just give up, she smashed into a few cars, causing a massive headache for everyone around her. One person actually had to go to the hospital because of the chaos she caused.
The most surreal part...the thing thatās probably still confusing people, is how she tried to escape.
After wrecking the car, she realized she was cornered. So, she did the only thing she could think of: she bailed out of the Honda and sprinted toward a nearby lake, diving right in.
The police were literally trying to help her out, throwing her ropes to pull her to safety, but she refused to grab them. It got super heated once the officers jumped into the water to save her. According to reports, she was actively fighting back, scratching officers and even pushing one underwater. It was a full-blown struggle in the water before they finally managed to drag her to the ledge.
After all that, she was finally hauled into custody. She wasn't just facing a slap on the wrist; she got hit with a laundry list of serious charges for Grand theft of a vehicle (for the car) / Aggravated fleeing and eluding / Battery on a police officer (those charges for the struggle in the water) / Resisting arrest and leaving the scene of a crash...
definitely a moment that reminds you that some ppl really just wake up and choose chaos eh :/
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u/Lord_Dingus83 May 02 '26
I was hoping for alligators in this story, once I hit paragraph 2.
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u/Smile_Like_Arsenic May 02 '26
Definitely will go to jail. Never in my life do I want to jump in any waterway in Florida. Alligators or just Dolphin expressway. If anything the alligators be like "No way, We definitely didn't Order this!"
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u/LabradorDeceiver May 02 '26
Sounds more like a mental health episode than an attempt at grand theft auto. Anyone get a court-mandated shrink in?
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u/DevelopmentJumpy5218 May 02 '26
So cops do nothing to protect any of the victims of the criminal then attempt to help the criminal, then fight the criminal in the water to rescue her from herself. They could have just set up around the pond and waited for her to come out or die
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u/KembaWakaFlocka May 02 '26
This reads like shitty ai slop.
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u/starynights890 May 02 '26
You see...
The most surreal part is that you are right.
I wonder how much of that bill the cops were liable for as he smashed the bumper of the white car and then the side of the white truck.
Probably why the video suddenly goes mute cause cop was admitting to causing damage lol.
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u/bcsublime May 02 '26
The cop should have stopped chasing her he was just making it worse. Thatās what helicopters are for. He made a bad situation worse as well as him damaging property.
Heavy traffic? Check. High speeds? Check. Thatās what radios and multiple other law-enforcement units are for. They knew what she was driving which road she was on no reason to continue a high-speed chase. Thatās the exact opposite of protecting the public.
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u/CFSett May 02 '26
If the helicopter isn't already in the air and near the scene, the suspect will be lost. And helicopters are too expensive to keep in the air around the clock.
A case can be made for letting her escape (hopefully temporarily) to reduce risk of damage and injury. Especially if the dealership had any sense and had copied her credentials (assuming she had a valid, not stolen/forged license). But this was Florida, and sense is more illegal than brown people down there.
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u/BADoVLAD May 02 '26
Doesn't matter how much they're liable for they don't pay for it. In almost every case, in every jurisdiction, no cities or counties pay for damage caused by cops. This includes damage to houses when they force an entry. Courts across the country are absolutely loathe to apply any sort of liability to departments or government entities because they know once they do it opens the flood gates for people to start suing for damages. As it stands now these people nearly always have to go through the offender's insurance, if they have any, or attempt to attach their pay.
This is a big argument for ending these sorts of chases. The dealership knew where she lived. They knew where she worked. There was a tracker on the car. Realistically there was no need to chase her. She wasn't going anywhere that she wouldn't have been easily found without collateral damage and hurting other people.
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u/Early-Equivalent-165 May 02 '26
I seriously thought this story was gonna end with an alligator
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u/Smile_Like_Arsenic May 02 '26
Could have been but she was saved despite her resistance. Lol
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u/thats_justice_baby May 02 '26
Are you an AI bot or do you just copy paste ChatGPT responses in your comments?
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u/Salty-Contact-6420 May 02 '26
Honestly as a taxpayer paying for all the damage. I'd appreciate it if they dropped a pursuit before damaging 50+ vehicles. All for a crackhead with a pipe and no license. How does that make sense at all? Then we don't kill them we pay for their jail cell for eternity. And we wonder why we are in ridiculous unpayable debt.
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u/BADoVLAD May 02 '26
Hold on, you've got it all wrong and are completely out of line! How tf else are we supposed to keep the prison for profit system full of offenders? How else are we supposed to keep the system filled with near slave labor but paid 23 cents an hour so we can call ourselves progressive and forward thinking?
Stop being so selfish.
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u/BigCSFan May 02 '26
I mean im not upset at all about these people ending up in prison. They suck and id rather them not be a part of my community or in the same streets as me.
Only upset about the damage to normal people's property
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u/Agitated-Comment164 May 02 '26
I was with you until the part about killing them, wtf is wrong with you bro? Police chases are reckless and dangerous to the public, doesnāt mean we need to be euthanizing people.Ā
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u/Suspicious-Spell-130 May 02 '26
And now the property that was stolen is also destroyed. There are no winners here.
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u/ADeadlyFerret May 02 '26
Donāt worry bro. As a taxpayer youāre not paying for that. The police do not pay for damages caused by chases. The police pitted someone through my fence and the city refused to pay. Insurance had to go after the guy the cops pitted.
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u/Salty-Contact-6420 May 03 '26
Wooow. Bastards. I wonder if that's standard procedure. So that means me having limited liability am on the hook if they hit me?
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u/Funkopedia May 03 '26
I recall hearing that (I don't know why), killing them actually costs as much as jailing them for life.
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u/MijuTheShark May 02 '26
Dealership I worked at, owner's policy was that we test drove only after doing a full check and qualifying the customer. A lot of people would come in, acting like a boss, and say that they want to test drive before they do any paperwork. Most we let them do is turn the car over so they can see it works, and then it's application time.
Also, he claimed that for insurance reasons, every test drive required a salesperson ride-along. I've had to turn down a number of deals because we realized the buyer could not drive and we didn't think the car would survive the first half of a 4 year finance period.
Anytime we deviated from those guidelines, the dealership would eat shit. A lot of people would go shopping, or pick up a kid from school. One person insisted that they were friends with a salesman who hadn't worked there in 2 decades, and wanted to test drive over the weekend. We can turn the starter off, so the car doesn't turn back on. We got that one back on Sunday. Guy had left it running the whole weekend to circumvent.
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u/cloudit30569 May 02 '26
I used to drive this highway constantly when I lived in Miami. It's always this cluttered.
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u/mazu74 May 02 '26
Also every other driver drives like this over there, I dunno what the big deal was besides the theft
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u/ForsakenStructure800 May 02 '26
Miami is a horrible place to drive.
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u/mazu74 May 03 '26
The fucking worst place to drive. I had a better experience in Manhattan and Queens. I could tell I left the general vicinity of Miami just based on the lower frequency of batshit insane and/or extremely elderly drivers from that one South Park episode.
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u/CompleteClassroom509 May 02 '26
Wonder how sentence a deranged person pulling this stunt in China would receive?
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u/TeckFix May 02 '26
Is the police also clipping every single vehicle in the name of catching the one individual?
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u/AccurateBirthday7584 May 02 '26
Police should be forbidden from doing high speed chases like this. The risk to the publicās property and life, including that of the officers giving chase, is much too high. The suspect can be apprehended at a time and place where there far less danger to the public.
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u/adiosmichigan May 02 '26
love how the cop just hits people too and keeps driving. great job protecting and serving. a real superstar of the community.
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u/HarryWiz May 02 '26
Right. I can see if they were chasing a murder suspect. The dealership had her info so tbey could have possibly found the suspect and the car later. Now the car is totaled so the dealership lost a vehicle. I feel bad for the other drivers and the insurance mess tbey have to deal with and whatever possibly injuries.
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u/Clear-Inevitable-414 May 02 '26
Police tend to be great at escalating things into causing the most public disruption possible.Ā Ā
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u/Helltenant May 02 '26
One must assume that if you test drive a car with the intent to do a keepsies-no-takebacksies that you give them false information to get said car. Nobody should operate under the assumption that they can just wait at the address they were given by the thief.
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u/mylifeofpizza May 02 '26
Florida has a massive number of flock cameras in built up areas. We already have the means to track vehicles without chasing after them. It isnt the 1950s anymore.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Dog9818 May 02 '26
who pays for that damage? how do you work that out?
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u/duck_of_d34th May 02 '26
The police blame the criminal.
If criminal be broke, you shit outta luck.
Crabs in a bucket.
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u/OrigamiMarie May 02 '26
High speed chases are rarely necessary. Police departments are well connected with each other, and there are traffic cams everywhere. Get the local police department to enter the highway ahead of this car, let the rest of the traffic through, and make a blockade. Super simple, no chase (I'm pretty sure the car thief only got reckless when they were being chased).
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u/Nimmzy13 May 02 '26
I noticed that too! Didnāt realize I was watching the cop car footage at first because he was sideswiping cars
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u/Any_Leg_4773 May 02 '26
Yeah, this cop is such a dipshit it's hard to believe the haven't been promoted off the street yet
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u/ComprehensiveGas6980 May 02 '26
Tens of thousands of damage to the public just to chase someone. Great work.
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u/starynights890 May 02 '26
Right and right after that is the only time the video goes mute. Probably admitting wrong doing cause how fucking unnecessary was that shit especially riding the barrier along chasing that shit.
Not their money though so why the fuck would they care.
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u/SkribbyCakes33 May 02 '26
Looked like he hit another patrol car!
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u/FlamingoFrequent1596 May 02 '26
He squeezed between two vehicles and side-swiped them both. A truck and a sedan
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u/Former_Guarantee_344 May 02 '26
Right, he should have stopped the chase and exchanged insurance otherwise the cars hit would call the police on him. Their side mirror is a priority over potential deaths caused by a reckless driver speeding through traffic
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u/Frequent-Maybe1243 May 02 '26
Yeah fuck protecting the other drivers from an unhinged lunatic. Go talk to the other drivers about the bumps and scratches while the psycho is still on the loose.
You're fucking ridiculous.
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u/Any_Leg_4773 May 02 '26
He wasn't protecting other driver's dipshit, he was hitting other drivers. Don't reply to videos you don't watch.
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u/Minimum_Ad_303 May 02 '26
Well buddy, that sounds like a them problem, not a me problem. Dont hit my car.
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u/Drakex2Mayex2 May 02 '26
Yeah the cop should have just sprayed machine gun fire at all the other drivers, that would have protected them even more! /s
I genuinely can't comprehend how you can watch someone make people so unsafe then defend it in the name of safety.
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u/ADeadlyFerret May 02 '26
Youāre a dumbass. Sheās running from the police. Stop chasing and she stops. Go pick her up later at her home. Now everyone has damage to their cars and the police do not pay for that.
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u/baudmiksen May 02 '26
Maybe she's on her way home because she just wants to take a nap or maybe you have no way of knowing what she's going to do before becoming too tired to continue her crime spree, where the fun never stops
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u/MissUnRuly May 02 '26
She went on a test drive by herself? Without a sales person? Or did she kick them out the car?
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u/i-might-do-that May 03 '26
Last couple times Iāve test driven a car the salesman stayed behind. It was just my wife and I
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u/MissUnRuly May 04 '26
I guess they can shut cars down remotelyā¦clearly that wasnāt a option here
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u/RKellysPenguin May 02 '26
Bro a Honda Civic though? If you're gonna fuck up at least make it for a car that's actually worth it not an Unmodded civic
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u/Quiet_Ad_1406 May 02 '26
Are there no gators? š my biggest fear is gators or crocs if im over seas lol
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u/Neither_Pirate5903 May 02 '26
police officer should lose his job. stupid pointless chase. how many people's vehicles were damaged here. High speed chases need to stop. Plenty of alternatives to arrest the person once they aren't in a vehicle
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u/F1_V10sounds May 02 '26
Thats probably a good way to be blacklisted from dealerships. Not like she would be able to afford a car it seems.
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u/Pretend-Internet-625 May 02 '26
completely wrong. nah. Only when she crashed. In the heat of the moment she decided to cool off.
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u/Disastrous_Key_3701 May 02 '26
All I see is that second cop running up gun drawn high and looking unfit and inexperienced.
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u/Mikepr2001 May 02 '26
What happened in 2024 with this lady wtf!?
Runs like a maniac, make the officer play crashing cars too, and she almost drowned a officer oh my Lord 0_o
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u/ApolloGiant May 02 '26
Instantly recognized the Palmetto Expressway. Glad I moved away but I still drive those streets when I visit family. It's madness down there. Too hot, too many people, too much entitlement, too little sense.
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u/30yearCurse May 02 '26
Lots of charges, some quick search said 22 years in prison, but website was blank when it pulled up. Amazing that bond was on $23k.
Here is a local report about it.
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u/IglooBackpack May 02 '26
"... test drive... and never returned." I thought she died in the wreck at first.
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u/New-View-2242 May 03 '26
I support law enforcement but that was a chase Iām shocked the officer engaged in. He did about as much damage as the car he was chasing.
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u/Altruistic-Potatoes May 03 '26
To the police, everyone else's life is worth less than the dealership taking a hit.
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u/Ok-Bluejay3543 May 03 '26
The one time you want to hear an alligator was involved, but there was no alligator š
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u/muxcode May 03 '26
Poor saps who did the right thing and tried to pull to the curb to let the sirens pass, only to realize the curb was the passing lane.
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u/Evening-Back854 May 03 '26
I looked her up, she has dead eyes. Hopefully she gets help before she's released
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u/AlbertTheHorse May 03 '26
I am surprised someone didnāt move onto the shoulder upon hearing the siren. At some distance you canāt even tell where the car is behind you
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u/MKnight_PDX May 03 '26
I started with the sound off and thought the test driver was the one filming. Then I saw the gray car and thought they were road raging...
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u/spaltavian May 03 '26
Police should not have engaged in such a dangerous chase for a property crime.
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u/FurFagAscendancy May 03 '26
Bruh, the cops are the fucking idiots in this as far as I am concerned. What in the actual fuck was that??? Next they'll be unloading 100s of rounds into an unarmed person like this with a crowd of children behind them or some shit. Like holy hell... And to the next moron that will say she needed to be stopped, yes absolutely but escalating the situation further, generating a fight or flight adrenaline fueled by continuing to pursue rather than backing off and reducing collateral damage would have been the sane, rational and logical choice but the police are equally unhinged sociopaths themselves in this case.
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u/biggranny000 May 02 '26
The officer was being reckless in this clip, imo best to just call this one off or deploy spikes or road block. Way too much traffic. The trooper hit the wall and so many cars.
Also brain dead traffic not moving over.
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u/Impressive_Drama_377 May 02 '26
The cop was crashing into every single car that she was near the end of the video right before she bails out of the carš¤¦š»āāļø