By Taylor Galgano, Zoe Sottile, CNN
A police officer in Shelby, North Carolina, was fired Saturday after a viral video captured on a home security camera showed him wrestling a Black woman to the ground and repeatedly punching her.
As officers tried to handcuff her after the incident, the woman asked for mental health care, said she was off her medication, and repeatedly asked officers to call her father.
The video sparked protests in Shelby – a small city near North Carolina’s southern border – and calls for the officer’s dismissal. It comes after years of scrutiny and protests over police use of force in the US, particularly against African Americans.
Her father identified the woman in the video as his 34-year-old daughter.
“I was so upset … Why is this man doing this to my daughter? What reason? And she’s sick,” Gregory Moore told CNN, referencing her mental health issues.
The officer, who was not named by the department, was fired following an administrative investigation, according to Shelby Police Chief Brad Fraser. An arrest warrant for the woman shows an officer named Karson Hyder was trying to arrest her. CNN is attempting to reach Hyder for comment.
“As a lifelong resident of this community, I care deeply about the residents we serve and the reputation of this department,” Fraser said in a news conference Saturday. “While this incident does not reflect the values of the Shelby Police Department, it does reinforce the importance of holding ourselves to the highest standards of conduct.”
CNN has reached out to the Shelby Police Department and police unions in the state for comment on the officer’s firing.
It is unclear what happened in the moments before the video began. The camera was motion-activated and only started recording when it detected the officer and the woman, according to the homeowner, whom CNN agreed not to name due to their concern for privacy after the story went viral.
The video starts with the officer and the woman standing, their hands touching. The officer then wrestles the woman to the ground. She is heard saying, “I don’t have a warrant” and asks, “What are you doing?” The officer then punches her multiple times, apparently in the face and upper body.
A second officer then steps in to pull them apart as the first officer continues punching her. The second officer says, “Let go,” repeating, “I got her.”
A third officer then arrives and the officers try to handcuff the woman. She asks if she could receive mental health care and asks the officers multiple times to call her father.
Michael Alcazar, a retired New York City Police Department detective and current adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who reviewed video of the incident, told CNN the officer in the video “employed force far beyond what the situation required.”
He noted the officer continued punching the woman even after a second officer arrived, which “appears to violate basic use-of-force principles,” he said.
The incident “will forever impact the life” of the woman and her family, her attorney Ronald Haynes Jr. told CNN. “This has devastated our community and furthered the distrust between the African American community and the police.”
Investigators ask for patience after video sparks protests
The police department provided the findings of the investigation to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation for an independent review of any criminal violations, Fraser said.
“We understand the community has questions and concerns, and we take that very seriously,” Chip Hawley, director of the bureau, said Read more