Man guilty in police-impersonation case

A former Richmond police officer began serving a month in jail yesterday for impersonating a police officer.

Key testimony came from an actual police officer who named the defendant as the man who dangerously tailgated her and emphatically identified himself as a police officer.

"I'm a cop. I'm a cop," Jasmine Rodriguez, a Richmond police officer, testified yesterday, describing the words of a man she later learned was Philip C. Flournoy, 36.

She said Flournoy was belligerent, waving his arms and sticking out his chest after she pulled her car to a stop on Gaskins Road north of Broad Street shortly after midnight Dec. 28. She said she was trying to avoid a red pickup truck that had been driving dangerously close to her for nearly a mile.

The truck was changing speeds and not passing, she said, identifying Flournoy as the driver.

She had just left work and was in her private car on the way home but still in uniform, she said. Rodriguez, barely more than 5 feet tall, works the city's tough Midlothian Turnpike corridor.

Flournoy denied tailgating Rodriguez's car, said he was concerned something was wrong with her car, and merely pointed to Rodriguez's uniform patch and said: "I worked there."

He denied suggesting, as Rodriguez testified, that he had boasted she had no authority to do anything to him outside the city limits.

Henrico County Circuit Judge L.A. Harris Jr. said he believed the testimony of Rodriguez and found Flournoy guilty of impersonating a police officer even though he had only stated to Flournoy that he was an officer and had not directed her to do anything.

Flournoy, according to a Richmond Police Department spokesman, was an officer from 1997 through 2005, when he was terminated.

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or .