Retired RPD officer weighs in on traffic stop, accusations of brutality

Retired officer speaks on traffic stop-turned-physical

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ROCHESTER, N.Y. — News10NBC is following accusations of police brutality out of a traffic stop in May. 

On May 7, officers pulled over 22-year-old Marvin Taylor on Dale Street in the city’s north side. When he didn’t comply with their orders, officers smashed his windows and dragged him out of the car, handcuffing him.

Here’s the entire body cam footage from the traffic stop:

News10NBC’s Hailie Higgins talked to Johnny Fiorica, who spent 30 years in the Rochester Police Department. Fiorica runs the podcast Crime Dawgs, where he and two other retired officers discuss issues and current events in law enforcement.

Fiorica and Higgins walked through the police body camera footage and looked at how and why officers make decisions.

“The officers did nothing wrong,” Fiorica said at the start of the interview. “They did nothing wrong. To the untrained eye maybe in their opinion but to the trained eye — they did nothing wrong.”

Rochester police say that Taylor pulled over about a block away from when officers first stopped him. Fiorica says that delay plus the tint on his car windows would immediately put officers on high alert.

Taylor told News10NBC at a rally on Sunday that he was also concerned about his safety. He said the officers came up to him with a gun out, and wouldn’t discuss why he was pulled over.

“[The reason for the traffic stop] is secondary at this point,” Fiorica said. “Their safety is first and foremost, they had to see what happened first with him rolling down the windows so they can see in the car. Then they address the secondary thing which would have been the traffic stop.”

Officers repeatedly ordered Taylor to roll his windows down because of the tint, and Taylor responded by rolling them up. After several warnings, one officer smashed the windows, and immediately began dragging Taylor out of the car. 

“They’re dealing with the unknown and the unknown is the traffic stop — what makes it even more difficult is the tint, especially the back tint,” Fiorica said. “They don’t know if there’s other occupants in that vehicle, they don’t know because they can’t see. Are there occupants? Are they armed? That becomes a very scary sketchy situation for everybody […] You always assume the worst, we have to assume the worst […] they’re putting their lives at risk every single day.”

“I have no warrants, I’ve never been arrested — I have no record,” Taylor told News10NBC on Sunday. “I wasn’t being disrespectful to the officers. I simply wanted to know why I was being pulled over and the officer never communicated that with me. I feel like my rights were ignored and I was treated like an animal.”

After Taylor was put in handcuffs, officers searched his car. Fiorica says they had that legal right because Taylor had been arrested, and his car was going to be towed for the expired inspection. Taylor was charged with obstruction of governmental administration, and given two traffic tickets. Taylor was uncuffed and released on Dale Street after he was given an appearance ticket.

“This is why I tell people to comply, because if they comply there’s a really good chance [that] what you think is going to be the outcome, what you think is going to be the ultimate worst — there’s a really good chance that its not even going to be that outcome,” Fiorica said. “You can see that these officers were good guys, you can see how they talked how they spoke to him after the stop. If they were such horrible people, wouldn’t they continue that horrible behavior? They didn’t. They were trying to say, ‘Hey, listen man, is what happened this is why we did what we did this is what we were trying to do. your lack of compliance led us down this road.'”

Sunday, Taylor drew comparisons to District Attorney Sandra Doorley’s, in which she refused to pull over for a traffic stop, and tried to enter her home and her car repeatedly during the stop, cursing at officers. 

“If you compare my traffic stop to when the DA got pulled over it went down two totally different ways.” Taylor said. “The officers never disrespected her or used any force to get her to cooperate when she was in the wrong. No traffic stop should happen the way mine did, especially not with probable cause.”

“Sandra was wrong,” Fiorica said. “And the only comparison that I’ll draw to the two is that both of them failed to comply. And if there’s a message that we can send from law enforcement to the community – you’ll have your day in court. You’ll have your say eventually. On the street is not the time during the traffic stop […] they are comparing and contrasting trying to race bait you because one is a Black male in an urban environment, ‘ghetto’, and one is a female white who’s privileged, an elected official, who lives in the suburbs.”

Chief David Smith said in a statement he’s reviewing the situation. News10NBC reached out to the Police Accountability Board and a spokesperson also said it’s investigating. 

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