The president of the Los Angeles City Council opened up about what he called a racially biased traffic stop that cops later revealed they conducted due to his erratic driving in school zone — but he wouldn’t say whether he contacted anyone to try to get out of it.
Marqueece Harris-Dawson told the Los Angeles Times that he made phone calls as a police officer wrote him a ticket during what he described as a case of racial profiling.
The Post reported that Harris-Dawson phoned a board member of the LA Unified School District Board of Education in an effort to get the ticket nixed.
“I called several people during that encounter so that there was a record of it besides myself,” he told the Times.
Harris-Dawson revealed even more details about the stop, which prompted LA’s largest police union to call for an investigation into whether tried to use his position to avoid a citation.
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He said an unmarked car followed him through multiple intersections as he headed toward an off-ramp before pulling him over.
The politician claimed the LA School Police department officer officer clutched the gun on his waist as he walked up to Harris-Dawson’s government-issued Tesla. He also said he thought the officer could have been an immigration agent.
“Because it was an unmarked car … I thought I was dealing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” he said.
Harris-Dawson claimed the stop was “not about vehicle safety,” though he was cited for violating the state vehicle code that prohibits motorists from driving the double-yellow lines.
“That stop was not about traffic safety,” he told the Times. “It was an investigative stop where the officer decided to give a citation, frankly, because I failed the attitude test.”
He has since paid the $238 citation and is “weighing” his legal options. He said he has been stopped by police four times driving in his government-issued vehicle.
Harris-Dawson previously recounted the incident at a council meeting, emotional describing the experience “as traumatic on Wednesday as when I was 16.”
The Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Police Protective League previously said Harris-Dawson deserves an Oscar for “fictitious stories told by elected officials” in trying to shift the blame from himself to the officer.
“City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s attempt to influence public policy by concocting a harrowing and self-serving personal account of an incident that leaves out substantive facts about the incident is both unethical and a lie of omission,” a spokesperson said.
The Post contacted Harris-Dawson’s office for comment.