Maybe it's because I just finished watching "The Shield" for the first time this week, but this video hits pretty hard. It really could not be clearer that police aren't always looking to protect and serve. Sometimes they're looking to justify their own questionable behavior and to hand out as many charges as possible, even if there's clear evidence to the contrary.

This whole incident happened in 2024 but it took two years to make its way through the courts. That's pretty unusual for what amounts to a reckless driving charge. We'll come back to that in a moment but let's start at the beginning. 

Kevin Finley lives in Florida. One day he ran out to get some breakfast at Chick-fil-a and then headed home for a work meeting he had at 9:30 AM. He lives in a new development just off a major road and the light at the intersection to control all the extra traffic has been installed but it hasn't been turned on yet. 

Finley waited in a turn lane to make the left into his development. The car in front of him was hesitant to move so when it pulled up a bit, Finley moved around it and cut across the highway. He then drove home and, because he has no driveway, he opened his garage and parked his car.

What Kevin did not know is that a cop was waiting at the same intersection. Officer Schwartz saw Finley go around the car in front of him and decided that was an illegal and dangerous maneuver. He put on his lights and sirens and then made a three-point-turn in the street and pursued Finley to his house.

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Just as the lights and sirens pulled up outside, Finley reopened his garage door to see what was happening. Officer Schwartz had a gun pointed at him and ordered him to come out and get on his knees.

Finley was handcuffed and then other cops arrived. The video below includes body camera footage from Schwartz, so we know he seems very eager to hit Finley with a felony charge for fleeing the police. 

Finley repeatedly tells all the police present that he never saw the car pursuing him and that his Tesla Model 3 has cameras running which will prove that he never saw the car behind him. For some reason, the police don't care about the video and never ask to see it. Eventually, perhaps swayed by Finley's denials, Officer Schwartz decided not to file the felony charges. Instead, he gave Finley four citations including illegal passing, expired tag, failure to yield for an emergency vehicle and reckless driving.

Schwartz's justification for the reckless driving charge, which is the most serious one, is that Finley supposedly fishtailed his car when he whipped around the car in front of him at the intersection.

Just to interject a bit here, I've owned a Model 3 for more than three years now and they don't fishtail. There are some settings you can adjust in a menu if you really want to make it possible for the car to fishtail, but other than that it never fishtails in normal driving. It certainly won't do so under mild acceleration to 25 mph. So this claim isn't just false it's not even really possible.

Anyway, Finley submitted his video footage to the police and that began the two year path of this case going before a judge. Finley says in retrospect that it seemed the police were waiting him out and hoping he'd accept a plea deal. They offered him one but he declined it and demanded his day in court. 

After two years, it went before a jury. Prosecutors presented Officer Schwartz and his testimony and then rested. Finley's lawyer then showed the judge and jury the footage from his Tesla. Within moments the judge took the case from the jury and dismissed the reckless driving charge, the failure to yield charge and the expired tag (which Finley had corrected the same day). Finley agreed to pay $300 for the illegal passing even though no one was endangered or even had to slow down because of his maneuver.

After his win in court, Finley filed a complaint with the police. He also got in touch with the attorney/podcaster below and agreed to give an interview. That video went viral. In five days it has been viewed more than 8.6 million times. 

And the result came yesterday. Finley got a call telling him that Officer Schwartz had been fired. That happened, apparently, after the police chief saw the video below. The whole thing is nearly an hour long but it's all worth watching if you have the time, including the wrap up at the end where the lawyer/host of this show offers his take.

Ultimately, this whole thing was a nothing burger. At worst, Finley deserved a citation for illegal passing. The fact that he had a gun pointed at him and nearly wound up in jail facing a felony charge gives you a good idea how much power individual police officers have. All it takes is a little lie about a fishtailing car and fleeing the police and this nothing incident could have been a serious prison sentence, a lost job, etc. If not for the Tesla video, maybe the jury would have believed the officer's story. But thanks to the video, a judge finally got the truth and now that officer is out of a job.

Finally, here's the announcement about Schwartz losing his job.