WHAS11 coverage

Off-duty officer's family releases statement about incident in Radcliff

Louisville, Ky. (WHAS11) - Questions are being raised about the legality of a stop after an off duty police officer pulls over a woman.

Did he overstep his boundaries?

Dine Bentley says she was trying to turn onto south Wilson, when another car sped through the intersection and almost hit her.

Luckily the other car swerved and avoided a crash but the problems didn’t end there.

“It was terrifying, absolutely terrifying,” says Dine Bentley.

That’s how Dine Bentley describes her first encounter with a Louisville police officer, after moving from Minnesota only a few days ago.

She was trying to turn off of Vine Street onto south Wilson Road when she says a car sped through this intersection nearly hitting her.

She continued driving and he came after her.

 “He was flashing his flashlight through the windshield at me.  I knew it wasn’t a police car and I didn’t want to stop.  And he pulled up next to me and used some pretty foul language to command me to pull my car over and when I wouldn’t he started to cut in at me so if I’d moved I would have hit him,” says Bentley.

So she says she pulled over and he got out of his car and demanded to see her license and proof of insurance; common practice for a police officer when stopping someone for a traffic violation, but she says his language was far from normal.

 “He said if his car was messed up, I would be next.  Those were almost his exact words,” she says.

That’s when Dine says he went back to his car and she called 911.  Her call went to police in Elizabethtown.

“An off-duty police officer just pulled me over yelling at me, cussing at me, spitting at me.  He’s got my driver’s license.  And I’m terrified,” Bentley said to the 911 dispatcher.

Elizabethtown police transferred Dine to the Radcliff police just in time for the Louisville police officer to return to hear the conversation.

“He came back up to the car at that point and started cussing me out again and I asked the dispatcher are you hearing this?  And she said, yes I am,” says Bentley.

Radcliff police would not give WHAS11 that 911 call but WHAS11 News has filed an open records request. 

In the meantime, Dine says, she just wants to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

“Something needs to be done because if it’s not done he’ll continue to do this and it’s going to get worse.  I feel sorry for the next person he pulls over,” says Bentley.

We contacted the Kentucky State Police to find out if this police officer did anything wrong and they told us the answer is yes and no.

They say he was out of line pulling someone over outside of Jefferson County, especially off-duty, but that as a citizen of Kentucky, he may have the right to make a citizen’s arrest.

Louisville police say they cannot comment on this matter, but that the chief of police will be looking into it.