Claim:

Police body camera footage authentically shows a white officer pulling over a Black judge before smashing her taillight during a traffic stop.

In mid-May 2025, a video (archived) circulated that claimed to show police body camera footage of a white officer pulling over a Black judge before smashing her taillight during a traffic stop.

The eight-minute video was titled "Cop Pulls Over Black Judge and Lives To Regret It."

In the video, a police officer purportedly from the city of Sunny Springs, Florida, approaches a black Mercedes. The officer makes remarks about the car being very nice and repeatedly asks whether the driver, a Black woman, owns it. After checking the driver's license and registration, the officer returns to the car with a citation for the driver, who he said drove five miles below the speed limit. The officer then covers his body camera and the sound of smashing glass plays. The driver gets out of the car and reveals she is a judge, before telling the officer she will see him in court.

However, further inspection of the video revealed it was staged. A logo on the door of the police cruiser seen in the video read "City of Sunny Springs, State of Florida." We found no proof in government archives or on online map services that the city of Sunny Springs existed in Florida, nor that it had a police force. The logo was an almost exact copy (archived) of the logo for Quincy Police Department in Washington state. The video was recorded in Miami, Florida. Another staged video (archived) with a similar plot line posted in 2023 was filmed in the exact same location. Additionally, one view of the car after the broken-glass sound shows that the taillight is intact.