The night Brice Wilson was pulled over for a faulty tag light by Powder Springs police, he couldn’t imagine that seven months later two police departments would still be investigating the June traffic stop and arrest captured on a grainy police video.
In the video, Wilson, 23, is seen being questioned by the officer who says he smells marijuana, then being frisked and searched, then being put in a chokehold, then — as he is heard crying out in pain as his handcuffed arms are wrenched up behind his back by two officers — he is stunned with a Taser. Twice.
Last week, for the first time, Powder Springs police Chief Charlie Sewell commented on the arrest his internal affairs division has been investigating since August and Cobb County police, at Sewell’s request, have been investigating since November.
“There are some things in that video that I took issue with,” Sewell told an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter after watching the video again. He declined to say exactly what he thinks went wrong in the arrest because he does not want to “jeopardize the integrity” of the investigations, he said.
He said he’s waiting for Cobb County police to conclude their criminal investigation before his department concludes its internal investigation. Wilson, who is still facing charges on the faulty light and resisting arrest, said police mistakenly interpreted his flinch when an officer searched his pants as resisting arrest.
“I was so violated, I was so very embarrassed,” Wilson said. On the video, the two officers searching him said they are searching for weapons and drugs. It’s standard procedure to search for weapons during a traffic stop, said Michael E. Tate, a former local law enforcement officer, internal affairs investigator, and now a consultant in police abuse cases.
When Sewell, who became chief two months after the arrest, learned about it, he showed the video to Cobb County District Attorney Pat Head. Sewell said Head told him he didn’t think the officers committed a crime during the search. Sewell then asked Cobb County police to investigate. “We take this very seriously,” Sewell said.
In November, Wilson’s attorney, James Howard, sent a letter claiming his client had been abused and subjected to a “cavity” search during the arrest and asked that Powder Springs settle by paying damages of $500,000. But, in an interview Friday, Wilson said he was not subjected to such a search.
Howard said he might have been mistaken because of the way Wilson described the search to him. The Powder Springs City Council last month rejected the settlement offer. Howard said he believes the findings of the investigations will be a basis for a lawsuit.
One of the two officers involved in the arrest of and the use of a Taser on Wilson, Lt. Vernon Bailey, resigned last August over a separate incident in which he took a pellet gun from a scene police were searching for suspects after a mobile home fire. Sgt. Keith Moore, who first pulled over Wilson, is still on the force and has not been disciplined, Sewell said, though he could be depending on the outcome of the investigations.
At the time of the stop, the department’s policy did not address the use of Tasers, Sewell said. The current policy prohibits their use on people who are handcuffed, except when they are violently resisting or assaulting someone, and other methods are likely to be ineffective.
Investigator Tate, who viewed the video last week at the request of the AJC, said the force used by the officers is “very troubling” when they raised Wilson’s handcuffed arms a second time, and even higher, behind his back, causing him to cry out in pain.
At that point, Tate said, Wilson appears to be responding to the pain, not resisting arrest. “The force that was used by the officers should be evaluated based on the action of the suspect,” he said. “It should not be used to punish or cause pain; it should be used to subdue the suspect.” Tate said using a Taser on Wilson twice while he appeared to be subdued is “obviously a cause for concern.”
Sewell said the sooner the investigations are complete, “the sooner the Police Department and community can heal.”
Wilson said he’d like to see the police held accountable — “so this won’t happen to somebody else.”
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