Rolando McClain Arrested for Signature on Citation, Replaced Name With Expletive
A National Football League player was arrested after providing police with a false name on a citation given to him for having his window tint too dark.
Rolando McClain, who plays for the Oakland Raiders, was pulled in Decatur, Ala., after police noticed that his window tint seemed to be darker than what is allowed by law. When the officer asked McClain to sign the citation he noticed it had been signed "f--- y'all," police spokesman Lt. John Crouch said in a statement.
"McClain took (the ticket) and appeared to sign it, but when officer Annerton got the ticket book back, he saw that McClain had written "f--- y'all' instead of signing his name," Crouch said.
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The officer that stopped McClain, Derek Annerton, noticed that the vehicles tint was unusually dark after he was unable to see a person behind the wheel.
"The tint was so dark that he immediately recognized that it was darker than what's allowed by law. He couldn't tell anything about the driver- couldn't tell if it was male or female," Crouch told the Decatur Daily.
McClain proceeded to refuse to sign his real name after several attempts by officers and was subsequently arrested for providing false information to an officer. Under Alabama law it is against the law for a person to provide false information to an officer "with intent to mislead the officer."
During the police stop, McClain told the officer he had a note from his doctor explaining that he needed dark tint for "photosensitivity and needed maximum ultraviolet radiation protection to include window tinting," Crouch said.
However, the doctor's note was not on a medical prescription document. Should McClain provide an official prescription from his doctor, the window tint violation would be dropped.
"Sgt. Elliott told McClain that type of doctor's recommendation should have been written on a medical prescription, to which McClain responded that Sgt. Elliott was not the officer that stopped him, so McClain didn't have anything to say to him," Crouch said.
McClain was booked into Decatur City Jail on the false information misdemeanor and the window tint violation. He was released on $1,000 cash bail after a few hours.
"I'm falsely accused of everything … it's corrupt. It's terrible," McClain told local media as he left jail.
