Driver’s message for anyone who ever got a speeding ticket: ‘This one’s for you’

Two days after pulling over a state highway trooper for speeding, Phillip Turner posted this on his Facebook page: “For those who ever got and paid speeding tickets. This one is for you.”

The post is from a video camera mounted on Turner’s dashboard that captured the trooper’s car flying past Turner’s on Interstate 35 in Jarrell in Williamson County without his emergency lights flashing, and Turner pursuing and eventually pulling him over about 10:15 p.m. Monday.

“I don’t recommend doing this but I just happen to be going to court to fight a traffic citation in the morning,” he writes in a caption on the video.

Turns out the citation was issued in Arlington.

Trooper David Granado eventually pulls over and asks why Turner has flashed his lights at him. “You need some help?” he asks Turner.

“Yeah, you flew right by me,” Turner responds in the video clip. “The reason I was trying to pull you over is, you know, you flew right by me.”

“OK.”

“I mean, you were going pretty fast back there.”

“All right.”

“Are you in an emergency or something?”

“I apologize, sir. I didn’t mean to,” Granado answers.

“I mean, people get tickets for that all the time.”

Granado again apologizes, and Turner asks him for his identification and badge number and then takes photos of Granado’s license plate and the Department of Public Safety emblem on the side of his squad car.

Before they depart, Turner tells him, “You mind slowing down for me?”

Turner said the trooper was doing well over the 75-mph posted speed limit.

At least one commenter on his Facebook post noted that things could have turned out much differently, linking to a Fox 5 report from Arizona about a man who was arrested trying to record a trooper who he says was speeding:

Turner is a correspondent for the police accountability site Photography is Not a Crime, according to the group. Earlier this year, his footage helped direct Austin police to a man who might have had a handgun during a fight on the last day of the South by Southwest Music Festival, the American-Statesman reported.

Turner later commended Granado for his professionalism. “He was very professional and honest,” he told the American-Statesman. “He owned up to his mistake, which is something I rarely see from law enforcement, based on what I do.”

Granado notified his superiors about the incident, the American Statesman says. The case was under review Thursday, DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said. In 2014, Granado was awarded a Medal of Valor for assisting a fellow officer who was shot by a kidnapping suspect in McClennan County, according to the DPS.

This story was originally published August 5, 2016 at 2:43 PM with the headline "Driver’s message for anyone who ever got a speeding ticket: ‘This one’s for you’."