An Alabama police officer has been fired for accepting a challenge to drag race down the streets of Montgomery.
Out for a ride on his motorcycle, private citizen Lawrence Lee Spillers pulled up next to an officer on a motorcycle at a red light and asked if he wanted to race, according to WSFA.
"I got turbo," the unidentified cop says in the video before taking off when the light turns green.
Spillers recorded the race with a camera attached to his helmet and then posted the incriminating clip on YouTube.
Montgomery Police Chief Kevin Murphy called the video "very upsetting."
"For the very thing that we are out here enforcing the law, for an officer to cross that line and violate it, there's no excuse. I will not tolerate it and he is no longer wearing the badge," he said.
But for Spillers, the termination of the officer seems unfair. According to WSFA, he has taken to Facebook to petition for the cop to get his job back. He has around four hundred "likes" and comments on the post so far.
"We posted [the video] thinking, you know, it was something fun, something you don't run across every day and that's why we did it," he said. "Our intentions were to never get the cop in trouble, and we definitely didn't think he would lose his job."
The officer, who has still not been identified by name, released a statement saying that he did not "have any hard feelings against the department."
"All my life and throughout my career I have tried to be humble and reserved, but I'm not perfect," the statement said. "If I could start over I would have never done what I did."
