Two police officers have been fired and three others placed on desk duty over excessive use of force during a protest arrest incident involving two college students, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said on Sunday.
Bottoms said at a news conference that she and Police Chief Erika Shields made the decision after reviewing body-camera footage of a Saturday night incident that first gained attention from video online and on local news.
“Use of excessive force is never acceptable,” Bottoms told reporters.
Photo: AFP
Shields called the footage “really shocking to watch.”
Police on Sunday night identified the fired officers as Investigator Ivory Streeter, who was hired in December 2003, and Investigator Mark Gardner, who was hired in August 1997.
Bottoms said the woman, Taniyah Pilgrim, was released without charges.
She said the man, Messiah Young, was released, too, and she was ordering the charges against him dropped. She did not specify what charges he faced.
A police report says Young was charged with attempting to elude police and driving with a suspended license.
Dramatic body camera video that police released on Sunday night shows police taking another young man into custody in a downtown street alongside a line of stopped cars. The man is pleading with police to let him go, saying he did not do anything.
Young, sitting in the driver’s seat of a car stopped in the street holds up his cellphone, appearing to shoot video as an officer approaches and pulls the driver’s side door open. Young pulls the door shut and says repeatedly: “I’m not dying today.”
He urges the officers to release the other man and let him get in the car as the sedan advances a bit.
The car gets stuck in traffic and officers run up to both sides of the car shouting orders. An officer uses a stun gun on Pilgrim as she is trying to get out of the car and then officers pull her from the vehicle.
Another officer yells at Young to put the car in park and open the window. An officer repeatedly hits the driver’s side window with a baton, and another officer finally manages to break it.
As the glass shatters, an officer uses a stun gun on Young and officers pull him from the car as officers shout: “Get your hand out of your pockets,” and, “He got a gun. He got a gun. He got a gun.”
Police reports do not list a gun as having been recovered.
Shields offered an apology and said she knows the officers’ behavior was unacceptable and caused further fear.
“Sometimes the best thing, the only thing you can do as a police chief is come in and clean up the mess that’s before you,” she said.
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