Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Two white Texas officers fired for beating black woman over $150 fine | The Raw Story

Two white Texas officers fired for beating black woman over $150 fine | The Raw Story: Two police officers in Texas have been fired after they were caught on video beating a woman who was being arrested for an unpaid traffic ticket.

In an interview with KBMT last week, 25-year-old Keyarika “Shea” Diggles said that Jasper Officer Ricky Grissom was polite at first, allowing her to call her mother from the police station to raise the $150 needed to pay the fine.

But Grissom eventually became impatient and cut off the call.

“He said, ‘I’ve been waiting here all this time when I could have been out patrolling, waiting on you. This is stupid,’” Diggles recalled. “He just went to cussing. And then I was like, ‘Well, you don’t have to yell at me.’”

Video obtained from the Jasper Police Department shows Grissom pushing Diggles up against a wall before Officer Ryan Cunningham comes from behind and slams her head against a counter top. Diggles is then forced to the ground and dragged by her ankle into a nearby cell.