Cop Tears Up Talking About Woman He & Wife Helped After Pulling Her Over for Expired Tags
Law enforcement officers are supposed to, you know, enforce the law — right? We all know that’s true.
But sometimes real life railroads us right into a very old philosophical question: What happens when the law gets in the way of human flourishing?
Remember how the bishop in Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” refuses to hand Jean Valjean over to the authorities after his theft so that his life may become dedicated to God? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.
Well, something not all dissimilar happened in Clive, Iowa. According to KCCI, Officer David Liska experienced an unexpected traffic stop in the middle of January.
While out in his patrol car, Liska saw another vehicle with expired tags. That usually leads to a ticket, so Liska pulled the car over.
The driver, one Lauren Bruner, understood that she was in trouble. “She knew they were expired,” Liska said.
“She’d just got a new job and was going to get a paycheck on Friday. [She was] trying to get caught up.”
Bruner faced a bigger problem, though: she didn’t have any insurance coverage for the vehicle, a big no-no.
When Liska asked her to explain herself, “she teared up and she talked about depression and a hospital stay, and we have a daughter who had depression, and it just clicked,” the officer said, tearing up. He also admitted, “I don’t write a lot of tickets because I’m a softie.”
But what he did next went beyond “being a softie” and into outright philanthropy. He called his wife, Ellen, and asked her if she would come pick up Bruner.
From there, Ellen drove Bruner to a place where she could get current tags for her car. Then she did something truly amazing.
She purchased tags and a full month of car insurance for the young woman. Commenting on her husband’s request to help Bruner, Ellen said, “It didn’t really surprise me.”
Indeed, Liska truly seems to have a tender heart. During a video interview with KCCI, tears welled in his eyes simply describing Bruner’s sad situation.
That tender heart earned the lasting respect of Bruner’s mother, Michelle. On Facebook, she wrote, “A little over a week ago on a Wednesday, Lauren Bruner was stopped by a Clive police officer for expired tags. She hadn’t been able to get them because of her depression in 2018, which resulted in a few months off of work. …
“The kindness, compassion, and generosity shown by this Clive officer and his wife has touched both of our hearts more deeply than they will ever know. He had every right to give her the tickets or, at minimum, the warnings, but he went above and beyond for my daughter. …
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart for seeing the kind, caring, loving young woman Lauren is and giving her a chance to get back on her feet. This family was truly put here by GOD and GOD put him in Lauren’s path that day, I have no doubt.”
“This job has exposed me to so much hurt in other people’s lives so I’m just generally empathetic by nature,” Liska said.
“There’s nothing really special about us,” he said. “We’re doing what a lot of other people are doing. We just got caught, so to speak.”
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
