At 3 AM on January 1, just a few hours after everyone was busy toasting to a happy new year, a state trooper in Baltimore County pulled over Francisco Hopkins’s 2015 Mustang in a routine traffic stop. Then things got… interesting.
According to news reports, Hopkins told the trooper that he was a Baltimore City police officer. “You’re going to give another cop a ticket?” he asked. “He called me an (expletive) then accelerated, aggressively spinning (his) wheels,” the trooper later wrote in his report. He also noted that the Mustang didn’t have a front license plate (the whole reason for the initial stop), and that it’s back plate was obscured by a plastic cover.
Hopkins sped off down Pulaski Highway. The trooper, in hot pursuit, clocked him as going 149 MPH, nearly 100 miles per hour over the legal limit. The officer finally caught up with him at a red light–but still had to threaten to pepper spray him in order to get Hopkins to leave his vehicle.
When he was finally apprehended, Hopkins was issued 10 separate tickets. Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said he was “disappointed.” Hopkins is currently suspended with pay from the department.
I don’t understand why he is suspended with pay.