John Felton posted video on Facebook in which an officer said he had pulled the 25-year-old African American over due to a failure to signal a turn in good time

An Ohio traffic stop that a police officer justified by saying a black driver “made direct eye contact” has prompted a promise of review by the Dayton police department and an acrimonious response from police supporters defending the stop.

On the night of 15 August, according to a Facebook account by 25-year-old John Felton, he was driving with his brother to his mother’s house in Dayton when an officer pulled him over for failing to use his turn signal “100ft prior to your turn”. Unnerved by how the patrol car had followed him, Felton said he turned on his phone’s camera and questioned the traffic stop.



Felton later posted the video to Facebook along with a frustrated post describing the encounter.

“I saw you trailing me the whole time,” Felton told the officer, who is unseen in the video. “I did signal, you just needed a reason to pull me over.”

Felton asked the officer to explain himself, saying that the police killings of unarmed black people were on his mind. “Like, no disrespect,” he said, “I don’t have nothing against police officers, but all that shit that’s going on now, that’s some scary shit. To have a police officer just trailing you, and then you just pulled me – ’cause you said I didn’t signal – do you know how that looks?”

When the officer briefly walked away, Felton told his brother, “He ain’t about to Sandra Bland me,” referring to a black woman found dead in a Texas jail cell days after a routine traffic stop ended in an arrest, struggle and threats.

Felton blamed the traffic stop on the car’s Michigan license plate, and told the officer that he had seen him following for “almost two miles”. He pressed for answers: “Other than that, why would you trail me?”

“Because you made direct eye contact with me and you held on to it while I was passing,” the officer replied.

Over the next two weeks the video seeped into other social media, accumulating nearly 50,000 views and raising questions for Dayton police, who finally broke their silence on Thursday to say “we are reviewing” the video.



On Friday the department said in a statement that the officer, left unnamed, “acknowledged that Mr. Felton made sustained direct eye contact prior to being stopped. The traffic infraction was verified by the video; however making direct eye contact with an officer is not a basis for a traffic stop.”

The department added that Felton “has agreed to a conversation with the officer”, mediated by a local service. “This will allow Mr. Felton and the officer to discuss the specifics of the incident,” the statement continued.

Felton was not available when the Guardian called his home in Detroit, but told local TV station WKEF: “I don’t know if he seen I was a black male. I feel like I was targeted, the Michigan car and it was about 11 o’clock at night.

“I am not your stereotypical black male that a lot of people have in mind. For me it’s awareness that this stuff still happens in 2015.”

Soon after the video was posted, a supporter of the Dayton police posted a description of a misdemeanor drug offense to which Felton pleaded guilty in 2014, paying a fine of $50. “Guess [the stop] had nothing to do with the attitude huh?” wrote the supporter, provoking outrage from Felton’s supporters.

The officer made no mention of Felton’s minor misdemeanor in the video, nor did the Dayton police department in its statement. Felton himself thought the publication of his record odd: “Like what did you accomplish?”

Elsewhere, a supporter going by the name Mike C defended the officer’s actions at length, arguing against “cop block people” and in favor of profiling based on “eye contact being suspicious”.

“A car with no front plate glares at the cop,” he wrote. “It attracts his attention. He spins around and sees it a Michigan car. So he runs a the plate. Driver has a drug history, with a car from an area that traffics to Dayton and he follow it to see where it is going on his beat.

“When he sees a traffic violation, he stops the car. He attempts to notice if there are visible signs of drug trafficking. Upon seeing none, most would get a warning or a question or two. The driver here was to make a scene, so he earns a ticket. So I see BS here, but not on the part of the cop.”

The user stressed that he himself is “not affiliated” with the department.