Exclusive: Dash Cam Captures Man's Joy Ride In Stolen Cop Car
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- Newly released dash cam video shows a 20-minute portion of one man's joy ride in a stolen Miami police cruiser.
In the video, a Florida Highway Patrol Trooper can be heard asking the driver "Are you a police officer?"
The driver's response can't be heard.
The trooper asks again, "Are you a police officer?"
He then adds "Retired?"
But the driver isn't a retired officer.
Police say he's Larry Nystrom, and he's accused of stealing the cop car left running outside Jackson Memorial Hospital's crisis center last month.
He took it for a spin, according to police, all the way to Alligator Alley and back again.
Click here to watch Lauren Pastrana's report.
It was on the portion of I-75 near the Broward toll plaza that a Florida Highway Patrol trooper started following him.
Dash cam video shows the trooper stays close by. Then the driver briefly exits the highway and gets out of the cruiser.
"Wait inside your car," the trooper can be heard saying.
The man gets back inside the car and drives away.
In the 20-minute clip, the trooper doesn't appear to initiate an official traffic stop, even though the dash cam clocks him going as fast as 99 miles per hour as he trails the Miami patrol car, allegedly driven by Nystrom.
"Obviously this guy was not someone that should have been driving a police car," Miami Fraternal Order of Police President Sgt. Javier Ortiz said. "Most of our vehicles have firearms in them and this could have turned out to be something really dangerous."
But Sgt. Ortiz said the trooper had no reason to stop the man in the patrol car, because at the time, no one knew it had been stolen.
"The Florida Highway Patrol did an outstanding job. He followed policy," Ortiz explained.
The police union president referenced a case from 2011, in which a Florida Highway Patrol trooper stopped a Miami police car and arrested the cop for speeding. The trooper claimed she was harassed as a result.
"Unfortunately due to the past incident with trooper Watts and one of our police officers, there's a policy now that unless the vehicle is deemed to be involved in a felony, you can't pull them over," Ortiz said.
In an email to CBS4, Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Gregory Bueno wrote "FHP is currently looking into the incident on the alley to determine the appropriate action and charges are pending."
Nystrom was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
He faces a grand theft charge and has been in jail since his court appearance on April 22nd.
"This whole thing could have been avoided if the officer took his keys out of the car," Judge Mindy S. Glazer said at the time.
Ortiz says that's not always the safest bet.
"We have laptops and radars in the car that we need to leave running or they will drain the battery," Ortiz said. "What I'm encouraging officers to do is lock their cars. We need to have all that emergency equipment on for our own safety. This is a trend we are seeing more often."
On Monday, a Miami-Dade police cruiser was stolen and recovered after the driver crashed inside the Port Miami Tunnel.
