Source: Reddit screenshot
An Alabama police officer with the ironically named Reform Police Department has just been placed on administrative leave after tasing a handcuffed Black man for no discernable reason outside of her fragile blue ego getting bruised.
On Dec. 2, the Reform, Alabama, cop stopped 24-year-old Micah Washington of Tuscaloosa. It’s unclear what occurred during the traffic stop before Washington was placed in cuffs, but, according to WVTM 13, Washington was charged by the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office with obstructing governmental operations, resisting arrest, marijuana possession, drug trafficking and possessing a firearm as an ex-felon. According to Washington’s girlfriend, Jalexis Rice, her boyfriend and two others were changing a tire on their car when they were approached by the officer, who hasn’t been identified by name.
Regardless of what happened beforehand, the officer was caught on camera leading a handcuffed Washington to her patrol car before the two exchanged words, which prompted the cop to say, “Oh yeah?” and press the taser to Washington’s back while he was face-down on the hood of her car. After tasing him, she asks, “You want it again?”
“She tased him in the back and she was holding it. She was just holding it there until he started crying,” Rice said Monday, during a protest gathering of family and community members near Reform’s city hall.
The thing to note here is how casually the officer committed a blatant act of police brutality. Again, it doesn’t matter what Washington did to get arrested. It doesn’t matter what he said to her on the way to her cruiser. What does matter is that he posed no physical threat to her and was physically complying at the moment she used a weapon on him. Cops say disrespectful things to young Black people all the time, but their suspects don’t get to commit acts of violence against their arresting officers just because they took it personally. The officer had no right or reason to tase Washington, but she did it all the same and then threatened to do it again with confidence and no apparent fear of consequences.
You’ll never convince Black people that racist brutality isn’t ingrained in the very culture of policing in America as long as police officers do things like this as casually as if they were scraping gum off the bottom of their shoes.
“When I seen it, I couldn’t do nothing but cry,” Rice said. “I couldn’t do nothing but cry.”
It’s unclear what disciplinary action the officer will face, if any, but Reform police Chief Richard Black and Mayor Melody Davis said in a joint statement that the “department is in the process of turning over all materials related to this arrest to the Alabama State Bureau of Investigation and has requested a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the arrest.”
But, again, if it was this easy for the officer to commit police brutality, it’s likely because that kind of behavior is so rarely punished significantly. It’s not about “a few bad apples,” it’s an indication that the whole orchard is rotten.
SEE ALSO:
Ex-Louisiana Cop Gets Light Sentence For Tasing, Beating And Pistol-Whipping ‘Nonviolent’ Black Man
62-Year-Old Black Man Dies In Custody After Telling Atlanta Officer Who Tased Him, ‘I Can’t Breathe’
