REFORM, Ala. — An Alabama police officer is on leave after video circulated on social media showed her appearing to shock a handcuffed and compliant man with a stun gun and telling him to shut up after he cried out in pain.
The video shows a white female police officer shocking a Black man after placing him in handcuffs and leaning him against a car.
In the 45-second video clip, which went viral, the handcuffed man is not resisting and tells the officer he has a gun on him. She retrieves it and places it on the hood of the car, saying, “Oh, yeah.”
He asks her, “What you saying, ‘Oh, yeah’ for?”
She then appears to shock him with the stun gun pressed to his back and tells him to be quiet.
“Oh, my God,” he cries out and continues to bellow.
“You want it again? … You was big and bad,” she says before using profanity to tell him to shut up.
Friends and family said the man, identified as 24-year-old Micah Washington, was changing a tire on the side of the road with others when the officer approached them.
Reform Mayor Melody Davis and Police Chief Richard Black sent out a statement Monday saying the officer has been placed on administrative leave and they have requested a state investigation.
“The Reform Police Department is aware of a video circulating involving a citizen’s arrest on December 2, 2023. The department is in the process of turning over all materials related to this arrest to the Alabama State Bureau of Investigation and has requested a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the arrest,’’ the statement reads.
The mayor and police chief referred questions to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. An email to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency was not immediately returned. The statement from the mayor and police chief did not name the officer. Court records filed in connection with Washington’s arrest listed the complainant as Dana Elmore and listed a number for Reform City Hall. The Associated Press was unable to reach Elmore for comment.
Reform is a town of about 1,495 about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of Tuscaloosa.
A crowd gathered outside the Reform town hall Monday night to protest the use of force.
“She Tased him in the back and she was holding it. She was just holding it there until he started crying,” Jalexis Rice, Washington’s girlfriend, told WVTM. She said Washington and two others were changing a tire on a car.
“When I seen it, I couldn’t do nothing but cry,” Rice said of the video. “I couldn’t do nothing but cry.”
Court records show that the investigator signed a complaint charging Washington and another man with trafficking fentanyl, but state prosecutors dropped the charge Monday after “further testing” showed the substance was not fentanyl. They were also charged with resisting arrest, interference with a government operation and marijuana possession.
