Feeling all warm and fuzzy about cops because they hand out Christmas presents? Great. Here's a police officer breaking the law, running through a red light, and smashing into a random driver.
We've all seen it before, countless times. A police officer briefly turns on their emergency lights, runs through an intersection, and then turns them off immediately after going through. Are they using subtlety in heading towards an emergency? Or do they just not feel like waiting at an intersection like the rest of us plebs, using their cop-ly privilege to completely disobey the traffic laws that govern everyone else in humanity?
In this case, the situation was definitely the latter. But there's a silver lining. Sort of. In the form of a modicum of justice
After hitting the victim and making sure she was alright, the St. Paul, Minnesota police officer immediately knew he was wrong, according to a comment left by the person who submitted the video:
The women said, I have insurance and the cop said, "don't worry; this is all my fault."
But I wasn't sure if that was the end of the story, and whether or not the police officer would face consequences like the rest of us would.
And it turns out, he will be. Sergeant Paul Paulos of the St. Paul Police Department told us that the cop was issued a citation for running a red light, and he was certainly in the wrong here. Unfortunately he couldn't release the police officer's name, pending an internal investigation, but further punishment may be forthcoming.
Oh, and the cop didn't turn his lights on for an emergency situation at all. He just felt like going through the light.
It's hard to get definite information on how common this sort of thing is, but in 2012 83 people were killed in collisions with police vehicles, according to NHTSA. Only 35 of those killed were by police vehicles in emergency use at the time, according to the report.