Kathleen “Katie” Thomas, a Florida adaptive athlete and social media creator, got pulled over in Lake Worth Beach on Feb. 11 when a sheriff’s deputy claimed she’d been holding and using a phone in her right hand while driving.
There was one problem that completely wrecked the charge straightaway: Thomas doesn’t have a right hand. She was born with a congenital limb difference, and her lower right arm ends below the elbow. Bodycam footage shows Thomas lifting her right arm toward the deputy as if plain sight might settle the matter.
Common sense was left in the deputy’s sock drawer.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office deputy pressed ahead anyway, telling Thomas she drove past him while holding the phone with her right hand and manipulating it. Thomas raised the arm he accused her of using and gave him the visual evidence sitting right in front of him.
The stop should’ve ended with an apology, a nervous laugh, and a quick return to traffic duty. Instead, the deputy kept asking whether she had used her phone, then asked her to swear “hand to God.” Thomas raised her right arm again, but the deputy then told her to raise her left hand.
Pride had already climbed into the patrol car and locked the doors.
CBS News shares the incredulity Thomas felt when pulled over.
Thomas said she thought it was just a misunderstanding. But despite the impossibility of Thomas using her phone with her right hand while driving, the deputy ultimately wrote the ticket.
“Initially, [I thought], ‘Oh, this is going to be funny, which is why I laughed,'” Thomas exclusively told CBS News. “I cackled, more like it. But then it became very apparent when he did not laugh or interact in like, a friendly manner, that it was not going to go that way.”
She added, “I wouldn’t say it put me on edge, but it definitely left an unsettling feeling of, ‘OK, what is this? Where are we going with this?'”
The viral bodycam video shows the deputy continuing to ask Thomas if she was using her phone with her right hand. Then the officer asks her to swear, “hand to God,” that she hadn’t been using her device. Thomas raises her right arm. The officer responds by telling her to raise her left, and only, hand.
“Immediately, I was being my normal self and threw up my hand to God. He did not recognize that as a sufficient hand to raise to God, which is ironic considering that’s who gave it to me,” said Thomas, who was born with her lower right arm missing. “He proceeds to ask me to do my left, which is like, ‘OK, cool.’ Watching it after the fact, getting that bodycam footage over the weekend and sitting with it, I realized immediately that I felt very uncomfortable.”
The citation carried a $116 fine under Florida’s wireless communications law. Thomas pleaded not guilty and planned to fight the ticket in court. The citation later got dismissed for lack of evidence after the deputy requested dismissal. From CBS.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office told CBS News in a statement that the deputy “initiated a traffic stop based upon his visual observation at the time of the incident.” The department said the ticket was dismissed after a review of state statutes and “based upon the totality of the circumstances, specifically the lack of clarity on how violations are labeled in our citation software.”
“PBSO remains committed to professionalism, fairness, and the lawful enforcement of Florida statutes,” the department said.
The court result ended the ticket, but the bodycam clip did more damage than the fine ever could. Millions saw a deputy refuse to accept an obvious mistake while a driver calmly showed him the truth.
Police work is hard, and good deputies deserve support when they face real danger. A traffic stop can turn ugly in a heartbeat, and nobody should pretend every roadside decision comes with perfect lighting, perfect angles, and perfect information.
The Thomas stop didn’t require advanced training in constitutional law or crime-scene reconstruction; it needed the deputy to look, listen, and accept what his own Beneyes showed him.
Good policing needs humility because badges don’t make human beings immune from error.
Thomas handled the mess with more grace than many drivers would’ve managed. She joked online, shared the footage, and used the moment to talk about how officers interact with people who have, uh, limb differences. That said, the traffic stop made an impression that she still feels. From CBS.
Thomas said it “took a long time to get to this court date,” and said she had to do “online court” before the scheduled date. Getting the bodycam footage was cumbersome, she added. She said she hopes the situation can at least have a silver lining.
“I was born this way. It’s never going to change. It’s never going to hold a phone,” she said. “I would love people to take away is that limb difference is normal. Somebody who looks different than you is normal. All of that is normal. Normal is whoever you’re most comfortable being.”
“Why did you ask me to put my hand to God over the situation?” she said. “If you knew going into it that you were going to write the citation, just write the citation.”
“And I would hope that he gives himself grace for the interaction. We can look at it in the videos and say, ‘Oh, we should have done this different, we should have done that different.’ Thankfully, both of us walked away from that interaction,” Thomas said. “We were both OK. Nobody was harmed other than some emotional damage, I think on both parts. From there it just becomes a matter of, I really hope he takes the time to think about ‘OK, what is appropriate, what’s inappropriate?'”
Her point deserves attention: disability awareness shouldn’t require a viral bodycam clip, a court fight, and public embarrassment before an agency learns from a mistake. A driver shouldn’t have to prove she didn’t hold a phone with a hand she wasn’t born with.
The lesson lands because the absurdity can’t hide. A deputy saw something, believed it, and then clung to it after reality rolled down the window. Everyone makes mistakes; professionals quickly correct them, and authority becomes dangerous when a bruised ego outranks plain evidence.
Thomas didn’t need special treatment; she needed fair treatment, which meant ending the stop once the accusation collapsed. The citation vanished, but the video remains because the internet rarely forgets a public official who doubles down against common sense.
What I realized after reading this story is that the lineage of Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane is alive and well in Palm Beach County.
A $116 traffic ticket became a national lesson in pride, humility, and public authority. Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT for 60% off so you don’t miss sharper coverage of moments when ordinary people expose official arrogance without raising their voice.
