North Calorina city releases bodycam videos related to beating of black man
Newly released videos have shown a police punching and choking an unarmed black man accusing him of jaywalking before using a stun gun on him.
In a series of nine videos released on Monday by the police department, a former Asheville, North Carolina police officer Christopher Hickman, can be heard admonishing Johnnie Rush for jaywalking before a remark by Rush appears to set him off.
The footage were taken from the perspective of police-issued body cameras.
“Just write him a ticket. He wants to act like a punk," Hickman says in the videos, before apparently changing his mind. “He thinks it’s funny. You know what’s funny is you’re gonna get f‑‑‑ed up hardcore. Get on the ground.”
The city website described Hickman having used "dangerous and excessive force against Johnnie Rush" and was "quickly taken off the street," adding he was terminated by the Asheville police department over the incident.
According to The Washington Post, he now faces charges of felony assault by strangulation, misdemeanor assault inflicting serious injury, and misdemeanor communicating threats for the August 2017 confrontation.
"Christopher Hickman’s actions violated to the Asheville Police Department’s vision that all people are treated with dignity and respect. These actions have damaged the progress the Asheville Police Department has made in the last several years in improving community trust," reads a statement from the City of Asheville.
Social justice advocates have called for changes in city government over the incident, insisting this reveals a broader racist sentiment among local leaders.
A US coalition of over 60 organizations affiliated with the anti-racism Black Lives Matter movement was created in 2016 with the aim of halting the "increasingly visible violence against Black communities.”
The US had not yet confronted its legacy of "racial terrorism," which has largely been fueled by impunity for police officers who have killed a number of black men across the country in recent months, according to the UN working group on people of African descent.
The UN experts also expressed concern about the "legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality."
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