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Mayor of Galena Threatens Police Officer’s Job For Issuing Mother Traffic Ticket:

By Kathee Baird
December 16, 2014
Police line do not cross graphic

Galena, Mo.-  The mayor of Galena is in hot water after threatening a police officer with his job for writing his mother a speeding ticket.
A report of the traffic stop says officer Daniel Peeler stopped Cheri Bray about 6:30 p.m. yesterday (12-15-14) at Highway 248 and 4th Street because she was “traveling at a high rate of speed.”
The officer writes that mayor Dustin Bray pulled up behind the officer while he was writing his mother a ticket for going 16 miles over the speed limit and having no insurance. Bray approached the patrol car “all bowed up and ready to fight,” Peeler writes in the report.
“Bray placed his hands against the top of the door on  my patrol car not allowing me to get out if I had wanted to.  Mr. Bray very angrily told me he did not want his mom to get a ticket and slightly cocked his stance like he was bracing to throw a punch.”
Bray “sternly” told Peeler that he did not want his mom to get a ticket.  Peeler told him by law he was required to issue Ms. Bray a ticket for no insurance and but he would giver her a warning for speeding as a courtesy.
“Mr. Bray said he had fought for me to be employed by Galena, and asked me if I liked my job as a threat that I would be fired if I wrote a ticket.”
Officer Peeler told Bray that he “would rather be fired for doing my job and upholding the law than making an acceptation [sic] and break the law just to keep my job,” according to the report.
At that point Dustin Bray relaxed and again asked that the officer not ticket his mom.  While Peeler was issuing the citations Bray pulled over to the opposite side of the road and inquired how fast his mother was going.  When Peeler again told him 16 miles over the posted speed limit he responded “that is horse shit…she couldn’t have been going that fast.”
Peeler told the mayor that the radar gun had recently been certified and was in perfect working order.
Peeler says this was the second time the mayor has approached him on a traffic stop asking that a ticket not be issued.  “This is is the first time however I have been threatened over it.”
Copyright 2014 Stone County Chronicle

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