This Article is From May 09, 2018

"My Dad's The Mayor!": Denver Official's Son Curses At Officer During Stop

Jordan Hancock, the 22-year-old son of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, had been clocked going 65 mph in a 40 mph zone in Aurora, a suburb of Denver.

'My Dad's The Mayor!': Denver Official's Son Curses At Officer During Stop

Jordan Hancock told a judge he was speeding because he was running late.

The video clip lasts just 20 seconds, but it's long enough to anger anyone who believes public officials and their loved ones secretly suffer from a strong sense of entitlement.

Jordan Hancock, the 22-year-old son of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, had been clocked going 65 mph in a 40 mph zone in Aurora, a suburb of Denver.

It's unclear what preceded the heated exchange between the young man and the officer captured in the video, originally obtained by Denver ABC affiliate KMGH. But at some point, the 22-year-old unloads on the officer, spewing a stream of profanity and gay slurs and telling him his days as a police officer are coming to an end.

"My dad's the mayor," he says, followed by some curse words.

"Of Denver?" the officer responds. "Well, you're in Aurora."

"Guess what, I'm about to get you fired," Jordan Hancock replies, adding more expletives.

That was March 23, according to a police report. In the ticket, the officer wrote: "Attitude very poor, see video."

Jordan Hancock appeared in court Monday and agreed to pay a $250 fine, the news station reported. He told a judge he was speeding because he was running late.

The mayor was traveling and not immediately available for comment, his spokesman, Amber Miller, told The Washington Post. Jordan Hancock also could not be reached.

In a statement, his father said the family had "addressed our son's behavior at a traffic stop" and were working to turn "a personal mistake into a valuable lesson for himself and the community."
 



The Aurora Police Department said it was trying to determine how the video got into the hands of a reporter, according to a statement it sent to KMGH. The video has not been deemed public record and was released without departmental authorization. When it was leaked, it was also evidence from a matter that was pending before the city's municipal court, potentially jeopardizing the case.

Still, the department said the unidentified officer in the video appears to have behaved appropriately.

"Upon reviewing the footage at an administrative level, the officer was in compliance with Department policies throughout the encounter," the statement said.

Both father and son have faced scrutiny in the past.

As The Washington Post's Kristine Phillips wrote in March, the mayor acknowledged that he sent "inappropriate" text messages to a police officer who had been a member of his security detail in 2012. "You look sexy in all that black!" he wrote to the woman.

The city paid the officer, Leslie Branch-Wise, $75,000 as part of a settlement.

And in 2014, according to the Denver Post, Jordan Hancock was inside an SUV in nearby Fort Collins when a 19-year-old was shot and seriously injured following a reported shouting match between alleged rival gang members.

But police said Hancock and the other teens in the car misled officers about the shooting, saying "the gunshot came from someone in the area" and not from inside the vehicle.

Miller, the mayor's spokeswoman, said Jordan Hancock was "a 19-year-old college student who was home on break and was at the wrong place at the wrong time," The Post reported.

In that incident, the mayor's son was never charged with a crime.

Jordan Hancock's most recent traffic stop is the second headline-making case that's sparked outrage at a seeming abuse of an official position in the past few weeks.

Last month, dash-cam video surfaced that featured a cursing and coercive commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey raging at officers who'd pulled over her daughter and the younger woman's friends.

Caren Z. Turner flashed her gold "Port Authority of New York and New Jersey" badge and demanded that the law officers call her by her title: "Don't call me 'Miss.' It's 'Commissioner.' "

She said, early and often, that she is a friend of the Tenafly, New Jersey, mayor and also happens to be a personal acquaintance of the police chief.

Her daughter, she said, is a student at Yale, and the younger woman's friends attend MIT - and the officers were ruining what had been a nice Easter weekend hike.

The video was released via a public records request and, in a flash, Turner became the latest prominent person to receive a public comeuppance after being caught on video lashing out at someone with a blue-collar job.

 



(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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