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Quicken Loans mortgage banker John Felton reportedly will sit down with the Dayton traffic officer who pulled him over two weeks ago in an incident the Detroiter videotaped (below).
After a Dayton Police Department sergeant emailed Felton on Thursday to obtain his version of the encounter, which ended without a ticket, the force told WKEF that the Michigan driver agreed to a conversation with the officer, facilitated by the Dayton Mediation Center.
No details were provided, and the officer's name hasn't been released.
In a statement Friday, the city and police force said Felton signaled a turn later than required, but shouldn't have been told he also was stopped for looking directly at the officer and holding that gaze.
Original article, Saturday night:
There's heightened sensitivity in America about traffic stops in recent times involving black motorists. Here's an interesting one:
Photo via WKEF of Dayton.
Detroiter John Felton, a Quicken Loans mortgage banker in Detroit since June 2013, was driving through Dayton in his Michigan-registered car around 11 p.m. Aug. 15, a Saturday, when a cop pulled him over in a residential neighborhood.
Ana Kasparian, host of a YouTube show called "The Young Turks," says there was no apparently valid reason for the stop. A Dayton Police Department statement Friday says a patrol car video confirms a minor traffic violation, although an additional reason cited by the officer was invalid.
Kasparian plays a video of the encounter recorded by Felton, who wasn't ticketed.
The Detroiter, accompanied by his brother, says he was in Dayton for the sibling's birthday. They were near their mother's house when stopped.
On the tape, Felton -- a 2012 Ohio State graduate -- keeps asking why he was pulled over and why the cop tailed him for about two miles.
First, the cop tells Felton he pulled him over because he failed to signal 100 feet prior to making a turn. Felton seems incredulous. He tells the cop that he saw he was being tailed and signaled correctly. The cop acknowledges that he signaled, but not 100 feet before the turn, as required.
Felton continues to press, asking why he really stopped him.
"You’ve been tailing me for how long?," Felton asks. "You just needed a reason to pull me over. No disrespect, I don’t have nothing against police officers, but all this shit that’s going on now? That’s some scary shit. To have a police officer just tail you, and then you pull me over, ’cause you said I didn’t signal — what? Do you know how it looks?”
Finally, the cop explains while he was tailing him:
“Because you made direct eye contact with me and held on to it while I was passing you."
"What?," Felton says.
Dayton police and the city on Friday posted a one-page statement that says, in part:
A Dayton Police Officer pulled John Felton over on August 15 for not signaling within 100 feet of a turn. During the stop, the officer additionally acknowledged that Mr. Felton made sustained direct eye contact prior to being stopped.
The traffic infraction was verified by the video; however making direct eye contact with an officer is not a basis for a traffic stop.
Felton tells Dayton reporter Natasha Williams.of WKEF that a police sergeant emailed him Thursday for his description of what happened.
Before joining Quicken two years ago, Felton worked for 11 months as an AmeriCorps mentor and tutor for ninth-graders at Detroit's Cody High School, his LinkedIn profile says.
