Viral TikTok footage shows a Black man refusing to comply with a police officer who pulled him over. The man claimed he was not required to do what the officer said because she was a school resource officer, or “school police officer” as he put it.
The video was posted by TikTok user @musawilliams, who is presumably the man in the video, and garnered nearly 740,000 views as of Thursday. The TikToker has about 9,000 followers on the platform, and viewers were divided over the recorded incident.
In the video, a police officer can be seen standing by the driver door of the TikToker’s vehicle, trying to talk to him. But the TikToker spoke over her, looking into his phone camera.
“She’s a school police officer, and she’s not supposed to deal with civilians,” the man said in the video. “She’s a public school officer. So she’s doing something illegal right now.”
The officer tried to say something again, but the TikToker cut her off, saying, “I’ll be at Burger King. When you get a regular police officer—I don’t have to stay because you made an illegal stop.”
At that point, the two briefly shouted at each other, but what they said was unintelligible from the video. They abruptly told each other to have a good night, and the man seemed to drive away.
The video’s comments section was full of viewers arguing whether the man was correct in thinking he didn’t have to listen to a “school police officer.”
One viewer asserted that the police officer was mad at being called out correctly, commenting, “when you know what you talking about they hate it.”
Another viewer disagreed, saying the man was in the wrong: “You doing some illegal.. respect her authority.”
One user commented, “She is a real police office if you ran that light in the school zone she can pull you over she is a real police officer that works for the school.”
“That’s not true. She’s a ‘SRO’ school resource officer. She can pull you over , she can arrest you, she can do everything. You’re wrong,” someone else commented.
According to the National Association of School Resource Officers, school resource officers are full-time law enforcement officers with sworn law enforcement authority. They are trained in school-based law enforcement and crisis response before being assigned to work in schools. They are usually armed. And according to a legal FAQ post, they can pull you over for traffic violations assuming they are a “certified state peace officer with a commission and law enforcement job.”
TikTok user @musawilliams did not respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via TikTok comment.
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