JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi state trooper says he voided a $200 speeding ticket because the driver expressed concern for police safety. The driver also gave the officer an inexpensive wooden bracelet with Christian symbols.
Trooper Jason Ales, 32, said he was touched by the sentiment and is keeping the bracelet by the dashboard camera in his Highway Patrol vehicle.
The driver, Mike Powers, 27, of Nashville, Tennessee, said he was raised Catholic and while he doesn’t consider himself “overly religious,” he has been giving similar bracelets to friends.
Powers said he has been upset about recent killings of law enforcement officers around the U.S., so he prayed about that Tuesday night during a business trip. A medical company employee, Powers said he was late for a business appointment Wednesday morning and acknowledged he was driving too fast.
Ales said he had stopped Powers after clocking him driving about 80 mph in a 65 mph zone on a four-lane highway about 10 miles west of Oxford.
Powers — who grew up in New Stanton, Pennsylvania — said as Ales handed him the ticket, he felt moved to ask about officers’ well-being.
“I said, ‘How are you doing with all of the senseless killings around the United States of police officers and emergency responders?'” Powers said. “He said, ‘It’s tough.’ I told him, ‘A lot of us are with you.'”
Ales is a Baptist deacon in his hometown of Batesville, Mississippi. He said as he looked at the bracelet’s images of Jesus and angels, he had a change of heart about issuing the citation
“I said, ‘Sir, I tell you what. You don’t worry about that ticket…. I’m going to go back and void it out right now,'” Ales told The Associated Press on Friday.
Powers said he took the money he would have owed the state and donated that amount to a children’s charity in Mississippi.
Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesman Warren Strain said Saturday that there’s no ethical problem with the trooper canceling the ticket.
“Voiding the ticket was something he did after an act of kindness was extended to the trooper,” Strain said. “In this case, it was an extraordinary situation.”