Cop stops woman for phone in her hand but she doesn’t have a hand…

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:05]Hello, ma'am.

[00:00:06]Hey, good morning. I'm Deputy Garcia with the Palm Springs Sheriff's Office.

[00:00:09]The reason why you're being pulled over in the city of Lake Worth today we're doing an operation for distracted driving. You drove past me holding the phone with your right hand manipulating the phone.

[00:00:17]Are you sure about that? I mean I saw you with the phone in your right hand.

[00:00:21]>> not.

[00:00:22]>> [laughter] >> So, you want to just call this a day or I don't want to call it a day. You had a hand up manipulating the >> said my right hand.

[00:00:29]>> I thought I saw you with your right hand. So, first it was I saw you and now it's I thought I saw you.

[00:00:35]>> I had a hand up.

[00:00:36]The right hand. I saw you manipulate >> With the right hand perhaps not.

[00:00:40]>> So, it was I saw you, then it was I thought I saw you, and now it's perhaps not.

[00:00:44]>> Right. I saw you >> didn't see me with my right hand.

[00:00:46]>> Okay, so you saw Are you saying >> that you saw me with my right hand.

[00:00:48]>> I just said. I know what I just said.

[00:00:49]I'm Do you though? I'm asking you now, did you did you not have your phone in your on your hand?

[00:00:53]>> I did not.

[00:00:54]You did not have your phone in your >> I did not. Hand to God you did not have your phone in your hand. Hand to God.

[00:00:58]You all hand to God you did not have your phone in your hand. Hand to God.

[00:01:00]Cool. You have a driver's license, registration, insurance? So, apparently this woman ended up getting a citation, but then it was dismissed at the request of the deputy who issued it. Good police work, Officer Nancy. Generally, to detain you, police need a reasonable articulable suspicion. This is based on the totality of the circumstances and has to be more than a hunch. Here, did the cop even have reasonable suspicion to pull her over? Was he under a genuine misapprehension with what he saw or did he see her holding something in her other hand or some way violating the law and then he misspoke about saying the right hand? But, he kept doubling down and kept repeating right hand, right hand. But, he does seem to say something like with the right hand perhaps not.

[00:01:42]So, maybe he ended up correcting himself and he initially thought it was in the right hand, but it obviously could not have been, so that leaves the left hand.

[00:01:49]So, he's either very confused or he's lying or something else. But, at the very least, this is very fishy. Maybe he should arrest himself for lying and obstructing a police officer cuz don't think she could have had anything in her right hand. So, simply saying that is not telling the truth. At best, he misspoke when saying right hand, and she did commit some sort of crime or infraction, or maybe she was doing something with the right part of her arm. But, like I said, that doesn't seem super likely. At worst, he straight-up didn't have the legal authority to detain her, and if that's the case, I would argue he possibly committed serious crimes like false imprisonment, for example, among others. Detaining someone, even for a short time, is no small thing. Depriving someone of liberty and telling them they can't move with either the implicit or explicit threat of force is no small deal. Maybe what actually happened was not at either of these extremes and was somewhere in the middle. There's not a whole lot of information out on this case just yet, but maybe more information will come out in the future. Also, it looks like, according to some reporting I've seen, that in Florida, as long as you're not in like a school zone or a construction zone, holding a phone is not necessarily per se illegal. You have to manually be typing stuff into it, for example. So, the fishiness here only continues. The cop does say he saw her manipulating the phone, so seems like he's claiming she used the phone in a way that was possibly illegal. But, seeing someone manipulate a phone requires being able to see small fingers and hand movements in detail from far away. If this guy couldn't even tell she didn't have a right hand to hold a phone in and claims that a non-existent hand was holding the phone, how could he have seen her manipulating the phone? Like, typing in it, for example. Do you see what I'm getting at? If she was holding a phone and he couldn't even tell that it was the left hand and not the right hand, then how could he have seen the other details? So, that makes me question the idea that she was even holding a phone at all. Maybe she was, again, like I said, we don't have all the information in this case yet, but my point is this seems pretty fishy cuz he was so sure in the beginning that she was holding a phone in her right hand, and then the story kind of fell apart a little. So, you tell me. This reminds me of many other cases I've seen where a cop detains someone and gets proved wrong, but they're addicted to getting ID and to following through with a detainment once they've initiated it. And/or they just can't accept the fact that they're wrong, so they don't believe it. Or they just don't care that they're wrong. That type of mindset permeates a lot of policing. Is that what is going on here?

[00:04:24]Also, even if he was, say, under a genuine misapprehension and thought he saw her holding her phone, she would have had to been using it in a way that was illegal. Plus, if you're going to detain someone, you better be extra careful cuz, like I said, that's no small deal. But when cops go out looking for law violators, sometimes they gaslight themselves into seeing things that aren't actually happening. I've seen cops mistake sandwiches for phones, and I've seen cops mistake literally nothing for a phone. So, is that what happened here?

[00:04:56]I don't know.

[00:04:57]Let me know what you think.