A Philadelphia police officer has come under fire after video surfaced of him exhorting a driver he pulled over and using anti-gay slurs.
The officer in question, Matthew Zagursky, pulled over a man for driving an unregistered vehicle last Thursday. Holding tickets to an event called the Hero Thrill Show, which helps pay the college tuition of children of fallen police officers and firefighters, Zagursky then told the driver, “Either you buy these or I take your car, 'cause it's unregistered.”
As The Huffington Post reports, Zagursky sold three tickets to the driver for $10 each and did not take the driver's car. After purchasing the tickets, the driver quipped to the officer that he would rather take his sweetheart than “this guy”, referring to the man in the passenger seat with him. Zagursky then commented, “It looks like you want to look like two fruitcakes.”
Once the exchange was completed, Zagursky went after the driver for having pink windshield wipers. “What's up with the faggot ass wipers?” Zagursky asked. The driver then explained that they were in support of breast cancer, which his grandmother suffered from. Zagursky was unsympathetic: “Breast cancer I can understand, but can't you support breast cancer in another way? You look like a fruitcake, you know? What the hell?”
Philly.com reports that Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey is none too pleased with Zagursky, who has been placed on desk assignment:
“No part of that video is good,” Ramsey said of the footage, which also shows Zagursky spouting homophobic slurs. “It's just bad all the way around.”
“He used the tickets as a lever to not do his duty; that's extortion,” Ramsey said of Zagursky. “Whether or not it's criminal is a decision above my paygrade.”
Meanwhile, CBS News is reporting that Zagursky may in fact face criminal charges over the traffic stop.
Watch videos of the incident, which have already garnered over 1.2 million views combined, below:
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[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/BoBBy42992/videos/1204728199552820/” width=”480″ height=”270″ onlyvideo=”1″]