The story in the OP did start with a legitimate infraction, but on the part of the police officer, not the driver. The law is pretty clear that you can't just pull someone over for no reason and require them to produce documents. Right and wrong is pretty clear in this particular case, and it's insane that it took so long to get justice.

There's a useful debate to be had over the usefulness of the many traffic regulations we're required to follow, but it's hard to have that debate here, when the entire event started with an illegal stop by an officer, and none of the rest would have happened without that.