It's a seemingly routine police action. It's also one of the most dangerous duties law-enforcement officers face: pulling over motorists. And Wednesday night, it ended in the shooting death of an Orange County deputy.
"Traffic stops and domestic violence are the highest-risk calls - you have no idea what you're walking into," said John Gnagey, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association. "If I had to rank them, I'd rank traffic stops first and domestic violence second."
During the past decade, traffic stops have been a leading cause of death for police officers, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund in Washington. From 2000 through 2009, 118 officers were killed conducting traffic stops, compared with 82 handling domestic-violence complaints and 74 during disturbance calls, said Memorial Fund spokesman Steve Groeninger.
The shooting of Orange Deputy Brandon Coates remains under investigation, but preliminary findings indicate he was shot twice in the head after stopping an ex-convict driving a pickup in "the Numbered Streets," a high-crime area of Orange near South Orange Blossom Trail.
A highly trained member of his agency's Tactical Anti-Crime Unit, Coates routinely patrolled high-crime neighborhoods. Before dying Wednesday evening, he discharged his Taser at motorist Brandon Lyals, who later killed himself, according to the Sheriff's Office.
"It's not only been a tough year in Orlando, two Tampa police officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty in June while conducting a traffic stop," Groeninger said. "To date, Florida has lost nine officers in the line of duty in 2010."
The most recent fatal shooting of a police officer in Orlando also involved a traffic stop.
On Feb. 3, 2000, Orlando police Officer George DeSalvia died and Officer Edward Diaz was paralyzed when they were gunned down by a motorist stopped late at night on John Young Parkway.
"Although it is certainly a safe way to for officers to increase their survival odds, cops can't approach every vehicle stop as if it holds John Dillinger," said Frank G. Scafidi, a former FBI agent serving as spokesman for the National Insurance Crime Bureau. "But they may be perfectly justified in drawing their weapons and pointing them at occupants depending on the circumstances that could unfold in that short period of time between a vehicle stop and an officer's approach."
Orlando police Officer Jared Famularo killed a motorist in a shooting deemed justified earlier this year after stopping a pickup late at night with an expired tag near Portofino Bay Hotel, according to police and state attorney's records.
The driver, 27-year-old Phillipe Louis of Orlando, tried to grab the officer's gun while pointing a semiautomatic pistol at Famularo's chest. "When he pointed it at me, I thought he was going to kill me," Famularo said of firing 19 shots and hitting Louis eight times, records state.
