Frisco police held a terrified family at gunpoint last month after a license-plate mix-up led them to believe the car the family was traveling in was stolen.
On July 23, a family from Arkansas was traveling on the Dallas North Tollway through Frisco on their way to their 6th-grade son’s basketball tournament. A police officer spotted the out-of-state plates on the black Dodge Charger and ran the license plate number.
According to a Frisco police news release, the officer initiated the license plate search because that particular car model is frequently stolen.
However, the officer entered the information incorrectly, inputting that the license plate was an Arizona tag and not an Arkansas plate, as first reported by Law & Crime.
The mix-up meant the car’s license plate and the registration that the computer search returned were mismatched, leading the officer to believe the vehicle was stolen. She called for police backup to execute a “high-risk” traffic stop — standard procedure in the case of a stolen vehicle — in which the occupants are forced to exit the vehicle at gunpoint.
After police signaled the driver, Demetria Heard, to pull over, several police cars surrounded Heard’s vehicle, and police stepped out with their guns pointed at the family. Officers shut down a portion of the tollway during the stop.
The events were captured on police bodycam video.
Heard and her teenage son, who had been riding in the back seat, were handcuffed and placed in the back of a police cruiser.
Police were in the process of extracting Heard’s husband and nephew from the vehicle when officers realized the license plate error and put their guns down.
The officer took responsibility for her mistake and apologized to the family repeatedly.
“It looks like I made a mistake,” the officer told the family in the bodycam video footage. “I ran it ‘AZ’ for Arizona instead of ‘AR’ [for Arkansas], and that’s what happened. I made a mistake.”
“That’s my mistake,” she says. “I’m sorry. I know this was very traumatic. This is all my fault. I apologize for this, and I know it was very traumatic for you and your nephew and your son. … It’s not fine. Whatever happens to me, I’ll deal with that.”
Another officer also apologized, stating, “We’re humans as well, and we make mistakes … Please forgive us ma’am.”
Frisco Police Chief David Shilson acknowledged the error in the city news release and said he had personally apologized to the family.
“I empathize with them and completely understand why they’re upset. I apologized on behalf of our department and assured them that we will hold ourselves accountable and provide transparency through the process,” Shilson said.
“This incident does not reflect the high standard of service that our officers provide on a daily basis to our residents, businesses, and visitors.”
After the traffic stop, the department initiated an incident review “to determine what happened, how it was managed, and to evaluate what needed to be addressed to prevent this from happening in the future,” the news release stated.
Heard later posted a video about the incident on TikTok describing how the incident had affected her and her family.
@demijanale_ Replying to @❤️JenniferSmith❤️ this is the last part to all that happened. #littlerockarkansas #trauma #friscotx #dallastx
“This has been the most exhausting, the most traumatizing. … I can’t make sense of this. I can’t. And I’ve cried all day today,” she said.
According to Demetria Heard’s husband, Myron Heard, their son was so traumatized by the police encounter that he could not finish the basketball tournament, KARK NBC reported.
The family and their lawyer are waiting on documents requested from the police department before deciding whether to pursue litigation for damages, according to the news outlet.
Frisco Police Department’s public information officer told KRAK that the officer who made the mistake is still active on duty and has not been placed on administrative leave.
