The man, who asked not to be named to save his family from embarrassment, said he and his wife were on their way from their Woodbridge home to an adoption meeting in Maryland when they were pulled over after leaving the Exxon station just off Rock Creek Parkway near the Kennedy Center.
“I gave him my military ID and my expired Utah driver’s license, which I’m legally entitled to use because I’m active-duty military,” said the officer, a former F-16 pilot who has been assigned to the Pentagon for four years.
He said two or three other officers arrived and agreed that his military status did not make his license legal. He was handcuffed and his shoelaces were removed. He was seated on the curb and then in the back of a patrol car as his wife watched, he said.
“They said, ma’am, you’re going to have to drive the vehicle. We’re going to have to take your husband in for the night,” he said. “She was a little bit traumatized at this point.”
His wife drove off to get bail money from an ATM, he said.
He said he sat in the patrol car for half an hour before another police officer who had heard discussion of the arrest on police radio arrived at the scene.
“He said on the way over he called his captain and had the captain check with the attorneys on the active-duty status question, and they figured out that they were in the wrong,” the Air Force officer said.
He said the officer drove him to the 2nd District station to meet his wife, who had arrived there with the bail money. He said the officer apologized to them both.
“I find it kind of inexcusable that the same folks are harassing military guys and slapping cuffs on them when they don’t know the law,” the Air Force officer said. “There’s a lot of military in the Washington area. My interest is in making sure that the whole driver’s license thing needs to be an education piece for them, specifically as it applies to the military.”
D.C. police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump said in an e-mail that the city’s policy depends on the laws in the jurisdiction where the license was issued.
“If another jurisdiction extends the expired permit of an active duty member of the Armed Forces to the date of the member’s discharge, then MPD will not cite the member and permit him/her to continue to operate the vehicle,” she wrote. “We acknowledge the reciprocity.”
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