Civilian drivers say they are up in arms over what they see as a double standard: cops ignoring the speed limit, at times with lethal results. Justin Hopson, a former New Jersey state trooper and author of Breaking the Blue Wall," said police officers ... "[don't] think of it as a hypocrisy. It's more of a mentality of 'Hey, I have a badge and the ability to go fast." And it's a problem that police departments seem reluctant to acknowledge. In June 2009, a Milford, Conn., police cruiser going 94 mph in a 40 mph zone rammed into a passenger car. Ashlie Krakowski and David Servin, 19-year-old sweethearts ... were killed in the crash. The Krakowski and Servin families sued the police to uncover the scale of the problem, demanding to see dashcam video from the previous two years. "We wanted to know: Was there a culture of speeding?" Susan Servin said. "Was this an isolated incident that you could forgive a little more easily?" The families received 500 dashcam clips, including footage of an officer on a call racing at 113 mph in a 45 mph zone. But then the Milford Police Department said that it had accidentally deleted 2,000 other clips. Hopson said it was almost unheard of for cops to call each other out over speeding. Florida State Trooper Donna Watts said she received threatening phone calls and spotted strange police vehicles in front of her home after she pulled over a Miami-Dade police officer flying up Interstate 95 at speeds up to 120 mph. Watts is suing, claiming the harassment prompted her to leave road patrol and even her home.
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