Police shootings of unarmed black men dominated the news headlines in 2016 and fueled the Black Lives Matters movement.
The police killings of black men that made national headlines were in Louisiana and Minnesota in 2016 and Baltimore, New York and Ferguson, MO, in previous years.
However, more details of a serious case in Fort Worth came to light in recent months.
A report in Slate stated new footage was released of an incident in Fort Worth in the summer of 2016.
A police officer appeared to have shot David Collie, a black man, in the back as he walked away from the officer. The report said Collie had not committed any crime.
Dash cam camera evidence was used in Fort Worth police shooting
The shooting left him paralyzed below the abdomen. Two off-duty police officers claimed Collie raised a silver box cutter at them. They said they mistook it for a gun.
However, the shooting occurred as Collie moved away from the officers. The victim said he never had the box cutter in his hand.
Dash cam footage showed Collie being shot at within seconds of the arrival on the scene of an off-duty Fort Worth officer and a Tarrant County sheriff’s deputy who was also off duty.
The Slate report said police suspected Collie of being involved in an armed robbery.
Collie was charged with aggravated assault on a public servant. He spent 61 days recovering from a wound in his spine from the officer’s bullet. A grand jury dismissed the charges against him.
The box cutter was recovered 10 feet away from the place where Collie was shot, the police report stated.
Neither of the two officers in question have faced any public discipline.
Collie is said to be considering a lawsuit against the city of Fort Worth, according to his attorney.
His defense lawyer said the alleged use of excessive force by Fort Worth police is not an isolated incident and there have been other instances against black men across the city.
Last year, a Fort Worth police officer was placed on restricted duty after he appeared on a viral Facebook video arresting woman and her teenage daughter who said they had called police for help.
The woman Jacqueline Craig, was heard telling the police officer that a man grabbed and choked her 7-year-old son for littering.
The situated escalated into an argument. The officer grabbed the woman and the situation ended up in a physical struggle with Craig and a 15-year-old being wrestled to the ground and threatened with a Taser.
In the past few years, several arrest situations have escalated. Some of them ended tragically. Police procedures in Texas have been under scrutiny since the Sandra Bland case when a black woman who was arrested for a traffic infraction ended up dead in a cell in Texas.
At the Medlin Law Firm, we are dedicated to defending the accused in and around Fort Worth. Contact us here for a free consultation.
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