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Officer's Near-Miss With SUV Caught On Tape

Officer Sent Tumbling Into Ditch

Thursday, July 24, 2008 – updated: 2:53 pm EDT July 24, 2008

A suburban Minneapolis police office is shaken, but uninjured after nearly being hit at highway speed by an SUV while the officer was on a traffic stop.

Dashboard video from Officer Paul Oelrich's squad car shows the SUV hitting a car that Oelrich had stopped for on suspicion of drunken driving.

"The next I knew I heard a loud bang then I was rolling in the ditch," Oelrich said. The video shows him falling backward into the ditch after the SUV struck the car Oelrich was standing next to.

Burnsville, Minn., Police Chief Bob Hawkins said the driver of the SUV was intoxicated though the case is still under investigation.

The near-miss has been an epidemic for Burnsville officers. Oelrich's July 11 incident was the eighth time in 2½ years that a Burnsville officer has been injured or had a squad car hit by drivers during a traffic stop. Damage to the cars totaled $74,000 in damage. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that six officers had been injured in the accidents and four of them lost more than 1,000 hours of work time.

"There's no such thing as a routine traffic stop," Hawkins said. "Whether it's looking at their stereo, talking on a cell phone, adjusting that radio, reading that newspaper, adjusting their makeup in the mirror. Whatever it is that distracts folks from that road really creates the hazardous for all of us."

Oelrich said watching the video of the incident isn't easy.

"The heart starts racing, you start trembling, you're in awe," he said at a Wednesday news conference, Minneapolis television station KARE reported.

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