Dashcam catches moment former government official berated police officers during traffic stop

'I’m just telling you who I am'

There is, of course, no official manual on how to use an official government position to get officers to tear up a ticket, but for any enterprising self-help author looking to write one, a dashcam video featuring a purple vest-wearing, recently resigned Caren Z Turner might prove insightful.

During an Easter weekend traffic stop that involved her daughter, Ms Turner flashed her gold Port Authority of New York and New Jersey badge and demanded that the law officers call her by her title: “Don’t call me ‘Miss.’ It’s ‘Commissioner.’”

She said, early and often, that she was friends with the Tenafly, New Jersey, mayor and also happened to be a personal acquaintance of the police chief. She may have even been invited to attend their graduation, she told the officers.

She made sure the officers knew they were dealing with the cream of Tenafly society, not common riffraff. She was an attorney, she told them. Her daughter was a student at Yale University and the younger woman’s friends went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology – and the officers were ruining what had been a nice Easter weekend hike. And when all that failed, she cursed at the officers and told them to shut up.

Ms Turner is the CEO of Washington, DC-based Turner Government and Public Affairs. And until her abrupt resignation last week, she was a member of the Port Authority of New Jersey and New York’s board of commissioners, which sets policy for the agency and oversees hundreds of officers. She was appointed by Republican governor Chris Christie last year and served on the Port Authority of New Jersey and New York’s ethics committee, according to New York ABC-affiliate WABC.

But in a flash, she has become the latest prominent person to receive a public comeuppance after being caught on video lashing out at someone with a blue collar job.

In a statement on Monday, the Port Authority of New Jersey and New York said it has “zero tolerance for ethics violations” and that an investigation found Ms Turner’s actions “profoundly disturbing”. Ms Turner did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

On Tuesday, police released a dashcam video that shows the tail end of a traffic stop, according to NJ.com.

According to the news site, Ms Turner’s daughter was a back seat passenger in the car in question and phoned her mum during the traffic stop in Tenafly, a Hudson River town directly across the water from Yonkers. Officers had run the vehicle’s Nevada license plate and found the registration expired.

The officers were in the process of impounding the car and in the video, at first, asked Ms Turner if she was there to give the occupants a ride. Instead, she told the officers, “I’m just telling you who I am”.

Who she is, according to her website, is a lobbyist “with over 25 years federal government relations experience” who has “earned the respect of both Republican and Democratic policymakers”.

She has a trained litigator who has worked on issues that include defence, aerospace, genetic ethics and gun safety. She worked on the national finance committee for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and was on the Republican Congressional Committee’s business advisory council.

Her company’s Washington, DC office is a 15-minute drive from the US Capitol, which is conveniently pictured in the firm’s website banner. And as the officers who encountered her on the traffic stop may have realised, “campaigns led by Turner GPA are noted for their high energy, intense focus and no nonsense approach”.

At one point in the video, one of the officers asked Ms Turner to “give me a little bit of space here”, saying she kept moving toward him, even though he had backed up to a patrol cruiser.

She repeatedly demanded answers: why were her daughter and her friends stopped? What was the officers’ justification?

The officer baulked, saying he’s given the appropriate information to the involved parties – and Ms Turner is not one of them.

“Miss, this does not involve you 1 per cent,” he told her, saying he is not under obligation to tell her anything about the stop, the citation or the impending tow. She could ask the passengers of the car, he urged or read it in his police report. “You have no right to know what’s going on ... I’m under no legal obligation to tell you.”

“That’s my daughter,” Ms Turner replied, continuing to demand. ”And she’s a back seat passenger.

“I don’t appreciate the way you approached me,” the officer responded. “The way you demanded information ... based off your position in another agency, whatever it may be.”

Later, she warned him, “I’m not so nice” and “this isn’t going to go down nicely”. She repeated the officers’ last names back to them, letting them know she had remembered them.

“I will be talking to the chief of police and I will be speaking to the mayor,” she said.

But the officer insisted he had behaved appropriately.

“Badge Number 540,” the officer said. “Just to make sure there are no discrepancies. Matt is the first name.”

The Washington Post