Photo via Corners News/YouTube
September 1, 2021, 1:51 pm
A Texas police officer was filmed trying to make the claim to a visitor from Mexico that a Texas driver’s license was required for him to operate a vehicle within the state and seemed unable to recognize his Mexican driver’s license as legitimate, which seems strange for a cop trained in a border state to the country. A viral TikTok video shows part of the interaction with the officer, in which she calls his lack of Texas state license “another violation” and rudely asks him if he speaks English when he had been doing so the entire time.
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“Do you have anything from Texas?” the officer asks while holding the driver’s license.
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“No, I don’t carry a license from Texas,” he replies.
“So you’re driving without a license from Texas?” she asks. “That’s another violation.”
“What violation?”
“Driving without a license.”
From watching the video, it would seem that this supposedly trained police officer thinks that if you don’t have a driver’s license from Texas specifically, you don’t have one at all. In reality, out-of-state driver’s licenses are allowed to operate vehicles in all states, and in Texas, a license from Mexico is absolutely valid as well. The only exception is that those who have moved into the state must get a new in-state license within a year or within 90 days of becoming an official Texas resident, but this man was simply visiting with his young children.
“Is this a license?” the cop asks while looking directly at his license.
“Can you read?” he asks back.
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“Do you understand English?” she says.
According to a follow-up video, the officer refused to acknowledge his driver’s license as valid and issued him a citation before finally letting him go. The TikTok videos are from an account that tracks police misconduct, but a full video of this particular incident can be found on YouTube with a statement from the victim. In the video description text, he says he was looking for a affordable gas station when he noticed Officer Fraga following him.
“When I was pulling out to look for another gas station she locked her eyes on me probably noticing I wasn’t from that area since New Braunfels is 91% white people,” he wrote. “She started following me for more than 2 miles FISHING FOR A VIOLATION, she did not witness me committing any violation so she finally made something up.”
After what was shown in the TikTok video, Fraga apparently called for backup and on YouTube a whole line of additional police vehicles can be seen while another cop interrogates him about a previous and clearly sarcastic statement affirming Fraga’s question about whether he had weapons in the car with his baby. It seems likely that this was due to the frustration people from Mexico often feel over stereotypes pushed by racists, including a certain former U.S. president, that lead to racial profiling from police.
Commenters on these videos have expressed bafflement that a trained Texas police officer wouldn’t recognize a driver’s license from Mexico, with many accusing her of misconduct and lamenting at the paltry amount of training hours required to become a cop.
“So she wrote him a ticket for not having a drivers license,” wrote a YouTube commenter. “And yet she gives his license back and lets him drive off. I think she knew she screwed up. Especially in front of her boss.”
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“Badges coming straight out of cereal boxes these days,” said a TikTok user.
*First Published: September 1, 2021, 1:51 pm
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