Police in Texas held an innocent family from Arkansas at gunpoint on a highway after mistakenly running a car’s license plate through Arizona.
Body camera footage reveals what happened when a police officer in Frisco, Texas, ran the plates on a black Dodge Charger on July 23 and found that the car had been reported stolen — in Arizona.
The family, however, was from Arkansas, and the driver had owned the car since 2019. They were on their way to a basketball tournament; the driver’s husband coached their sixth-grade son’s basketball team. The son, along with the driver’s nephew, were in the car at the time.
Before the officer who made the error realized her mistake, the family can be heard crying in confusion and terror as several police officers ordered them to get out of the car one by one. Each passenger was told to lift their shirt so that the officers could see their waistband and walk slowly backward toward the police car.
“What did I do?” the driver, clearly upset, could be heard asking as she walked toward a squad car. “What happened?”
“I’m a nurse,” she said. “I’m from Little Rock, Arkansas. I’ve never been in trouble a day in my life. This is scaring the hell out of me.”
“Look at my baby,” she was also heard saying as officers placed her son in handcuffs. “Why is my baby in cuffs?”
The officer told her that when she ran the license plate, it “did not associate with any vehicle.”
“We’re doing this because we want to make sure the car isn’t stolen,” she told the driver.
The car’s owner thought the confusion might have been due to the fact that she had recently transferred her registration to a different city in Arkansas.
“I just refinanced it,” she added.
“It sounds like you need to go have a conversation with Arizona,” the officer replied.
“Arkansas,” the driver corrected her.
“Arkansas,” the officer repeated.
A second officer ultimately helped the officer who made the error realize what had gone wrong.
“It looks like I made a mistake,” the officer was heard explaining to the family. “I ran it ‘AZ’ for Arizona instead of ‘AR’ [for Arksansas], and that’s what happened. I made a mistake.”
The officer, a Black woman, apologizes repeatedly to the family, who is also Black.
“That’s my mistake,” she says. “I’m sorry. I know this was very traumatic. This is all my fault. I apologize for this and I know it was very traumatic for you and your nephew and your son.”
“It’s not fine,” the officer is also heard saying. “Whatever happens to me, I’ll deal with that.”
“She typed in ‘AZ’ instead of ‘AR,”” a male officer could be heard explaining to one of the boys. “That’s the mind-blowing thing. How’s it going to come back the same color, model, and make she typed?”
The officers are also heard trying to comfort the boys, who were preparing to play in a basketball tournament that morning.
“Don’t let this affect your game, bro,” a male officer says to him.
A woman claiming to be the driver of the car later took to TikTok to share her experience.
“This has been the most exhausting and the most traumatizing — I’ve never been trouble a day in my life,” she said. “I may have a speeding ticket or something. I’m a hard-working woman, I’m a nurse … I can’t make sense of this. I’ve cried all day today, I’m running off of maybe two, two-and-a-half hours of sleep. I can’t make sense of it.”
The Frisco Police Department says it intends to take responsibility for the mistake that left the family traumatized.
“We made a mistake,” Frisco Police Chief David Shilson said in a statement. “Our department will not hide from its mistakes.
Instead, we will learn from them. The officer involved quickly accepted responsibility for what happened, which speaks to integrity. I’ve spoken with the family. I empathize with them and completely understand why they’re upset. I apologized on behalf of our department and assured them that we will hold ourselves accountable and provide transparency through the process. This incident does not reflect the high standard of service that our officers provide on a daily basis to our residents, businesses and visitors.”
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