• The police chief of Tampa, Florida, quit after it came out that she used her job to avoid getting a ticket for driving her golf cart on the street.
• Last week, video of what happened on November 12 in a suburb near Tampa, Florida’s third largest city, was made public.
• Mrs. O’Connor says that she’s going to get food and that she doesn’t usually drive the car on public streets.

The police chief of Tampa, Florida, quit after it came out that she used her job to avoid getting a ticket for driving her golf cart on the street.

Last month, a Pinellas County sheriff’s deputy stopped Mary O’Connor and her husband near where they live in a gated community. The stop was caught on video by the deputy’s body cam.

She told the deputy who she was and showed him her badge. Then she said, “I hope you’ll just let us go tonight.”

Monday, the mayor of Tampa said that the police chief broke rules about ethics.

“Tampa Mayor Jane Castor has asked for and received the resignation of Police Chief Mary O’Connor,” the mayor said in a statement from her office. “She violated policies on “standard of conduct” and “abuse of position or identification,” the mayor said.

Last week, video of what happened on November 12 in a suburb near Tampa, Florida’s third largest city, was made public.

The deputy is seen telling Mrs. O’Connor and her husband that they were being pulled over because they were driving a car on the street without a licence.

Mrs. O’Connor says that she’s going to get food and that she doesn’t usually drive the car on public streets.

Then, she asks the officer if his body camera is on. She tells him, “I’m the police chief in Tampa” when he says it is.

The deputy can be heard telling her that “golf carts cause a lot of trouble around here.” Before she was let go without a ticket, she gave him her business card.

Mrs. O’Connor said in an apology last week that she understood how “this matter could be seen as inappropriate, but that was not at all what she meant.”

In a statement released by Mayor Castor on Monday, he said that the police chief should set a good example and be held to “high standards for ethical and professional behaviour.”

“That was not the case here,” she said, adding that it was “unacceptable for any public employee, and especially the city’s top law enforcement leader, to ask for special treatment because of their position.”

After 22 years on the city’s police force, Mrs. O’Connor was sworn in as mayor in March.

She was fired from her job as an officer in 1995 after she was arrested for attacking deputies during a traffic stop. The next year, she was hired back.

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