It was a routine traffic stop that escalated to a cop ordering a woman to shake out her bra in front of him. INSIDE EDITION speaks to the woman who couldn't believe what was happening.
It's the humiliating search sparking outrage. A police officer orders a brand new mom to lift up her shirt and shake out her bra after a minor traffic stop, and it was all captured on police dashcam video.
Twenty-eight-year-old Zoe Brugger showed INSIDE EDITION's Les Trent what happened after she was pulled over in Lakeland, Florida because one of her car's headlights was out.
"He instructed me to lift up my shirt up to my bra and pull my bra out away from my chest and shake it out," said Brugger.
Officer Dustin Fetz discovered Brugger had a suspended driver's license and told her to get out of the car.
"He said that I looked way too nervous not to have anything on me," she said.
Burgger explained she'd given birth to her baby boy just two weeks earlier.
She told the officer, "I'm sorry. I'm a little emotional and I really just want to get home to him. I'm really sorry. I don't have anything on me. There's nothing in the car."
But the cop ordered her to lift up her shirt and shake out her bra, not once but twice. He said he was looking to see if she was hiding drugs.
Brugger recalled, "This is when I started crying. This is so unnecessary. Why am I being made to do this?"
Her fiance, Larry Fields, was a passenger and he was frisked.
Fields said, "She was very distraught. Very distraught."
The search of her car and her person turned up nothing, but Brugger broke down in tears when she said the cop told her she was going to be arrested anyway.
"He came back to me with a written criminal violation and he said, 'I'm done scaring you. Go home.'"
The officer's actions were apparently so contrary to protocol that his boss issued a statement which reads in part: "Any officer proven to be involved in this type of behavior will be dealt with accordingly, including possible termination."
But all the officer got was a four-day paid administrative leave, and is now back on the job.
Even the state attorney is blasting the bra search, calling it: "highly questionable" and "demeaning." [Source: Jerry Hill, State Attorney]
Brugger's step-father, Richard Wiley, is a retired lawyer who first made the bra search public.
"I think it's a disgrace," said Wiley. "Certainly the abomination of all, holding up her shirt and shaking out her bra."
This new mom still can't believe what happened to her.
"The last thing you'd expect is to have to lift up your shirt and shake your bra out for somebody," said Brugger.
