On her way home from the Citrus Bowl on New Year’s Eve, city commissioner Shan Rose pulled her SUV up to an Orlando Police roadblock that diverted traffic flooding from the stadium onto eastbound State Road 408.
What followed was a verbal altercation in which Rose asserted her role as a city commissioner and questioned why she couldn’t drive in the direction she wanted. In the end, she was issued a $164 citation for impeding traffic by refusing to follow a temporary traffic pattern.
“I’m the commissioner, I live in Parramore you can’t tell me I can’t go home,” she told officers, according to body camera footage of the incident released by the Orlando Police Department.
Rose contends she wasn’t given a ticket on the scene and has yet to receive it, but she acknowledged it was filed in the court system. She said she’s hired a lawyer and intends to contest it.
The body camera footage shows Rose on the phone with Police Chief Eric Smith as an officer approaches her passenger window.
“You’re impeding the flow of traffic ma’am, I need you to remove your vehicle. The road is blocked,” the officer said.
Rose, holding her phone on speaker phone, tells him she’s allowed to drive home and shouldn’t have to get on a toll road to do it. “Y’all impeding traffic, you’re not even allowing me to go straight.”
The officer responded, “Nobody is going that way ma’am.”
A few minutes later, Rose pleaded her case with a sergeant who pulled up on his motorcycle, contending that she lives near the stadium and that she and her neighbors shouldn’t be diverted onto the 408.
“As a city commissioner, this is going to change,” she’s recorded saying.
The sergeant told her, “You’re literally holding up the dump of the Citrus Bowl right now … We’re trying to dump 60,000.”
The citation was first reported by WFTV.
Rose on Friday insisted she wasn’t stopped by police, but instead pulled up to ask why she was being forced onto a toll road, and why traffic couldn’t go straight, a route that would get her home in minutes.
In an interview on Friday, she said the body camera footage shows an incomplete reflection of the conversation by not showing the initial conversation, where she says an offer was aggressive.
“The part that is missing from the footage is the aggressiveness, because the body camera is not on,” she said. “He didn’t ask me for my name or ask me for my ID.”
Rose contends phoning Smith wasn’t an abuse of her power and that she followed proper protocol.
“As a resident, I have called the police chief when there is an issue,” said Rose, who was elected as interim commissioner in 2024, and won a full term representing District 5 last year. “All of us can pick up the phone and call him when we need anything.”
A few days after the incident, Rose emailed the city’s transportation staff inquiring about who creates routes for large events and to “please ensure all plans create access for Parramore and West Lakes residents to get home without being forced on the highway.”
In response, Christina Moya, the division manager for Special Events & Traffic Safety, responded that traffic patterns are designed to quickly and safety move stadium traffic, while minimizing impacts to neighborhoods near the stadium.
But, she said, making sure nearby residents can return home without getting on the expressway “is an important and valid concern.”
Rose argued that she was looking out for her district.
“I think we have to have a better process for people to get home … you literally have to pay a fee to get home,” she said.