Officer to motorist: ‘You made direct eye contact’

A Michigan resident who was visiting Ohio to visit his mother said a Dayton police officer stopped him for making eye contact and not tuing on his car signal 100 feet before tuing.

John Felton, a Dayton native and an Ohio State University graduate, recorded the encounter with the officer and posted the video on his Facebook page.

At the beginning of the video, the officer identifies himself as a Dayton police officer, then tells Felton that he was pulled over because “you didn’t tu your signal on 100 feet prior to your tu.” Felteon protested, and the officer said, “you tued your tu signal on but you didn’t tu it on 100 feet prior.”

When the officer walked away to run Felton’s plates and driver’s license, the motorist looks into the camera and said the officer had not reason to stop him.

“He needed a reason to pull me over, this is ridiculous,” Felton said. "He followed me for almost two miles. He saw Michigan plates, and he just needed a reason to stop me.”

When the officer retued to Felton’s car, the man said: “No disrespect, I don’t have nothing against police officers, but with all the (recent encounters with police that have ended tragically across the country) that’s … scary. And to have a police officer just trailing you and then you just pulled me over because you said I didn’t use a tu signal? It’s because I have Michigan plates, other than that why were you trailing me?”

The officer responded: “Because you made direct eye contact with me and held on to it. I’m not going to argue about it anymore, sir. If you want to keep talking I can give you a citation for the violation and you can take it to court. I’m not going to argue about it anymore. Have a safe day.”

Dayton police has not made a public statement about the incident, but they tweeted that they are looking into it. We will bring you more information about this story as it becomes available.