Fort Worth police caught on tape in multiple incidents of apparent brutality.

Fort Worth Police Caught on Tape in Multiple Incidents of Apparent Brutality

Fort Worth Police Caught on Tape in Multiple Incidents of Apparent Brutality

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Dec. 28 2016 6:17 PM

Fort Worth Police Caught on Tape in Multiple Incidents of Apparent Brutality

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Dash-cam footage ofDavid Collie being shot. He was paralyzed.

ViaNate Washington of The Washington Law Firm.

New footage was released on Tuesday of a July incident during which a Fort Worth, Texas, police officer appears to have shot David Collie in the back as he walked away. The black man had not committed any crime and was left paralyzed below the abdomen. The two off-duty police officers said that Collie had raised a silver box cutter at them, which they mistook for a gun, but the shooting took place as Collie moved away from the officers and he claimed that he never had the box cutter in his hand.

The dashcam footage shows Collie being fired upon within seconds of the arrival of an off-duty Fort Worth officer and an off-duty Tarrant County sheriff's deputy.

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The officers said they suspected Collie, who was not wearing a shirt at the time he was shot, of being involved in an armed robbery at a different location in which the suspect was a black man who wasn’t wearing a shirt, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Collie was charged with aggravated assault on a public servant and spent 61 days handcuffed to a hospital bed as he recovered from the gunshot wound to his spine. A grand jury dismissed the charges. The box cutter was found 10 feet away from where Collie was shot, according to the police report. The two officers in question have not faced any public discipline.

Collie’s lawyer Nate Washington told the local NBC affiliate that his client was considering a lawsuit against the city and that he had released the tape after a widely viewed video was released last week showing a separate charge of police brutality by the Fort Worth Police Department.

The department announced last Thursday that it had placed one of its officers on restricted duty after a Facebook video emerged the day prior showing the officer responding to a black family calling in an alleged assault by questioning if the assault was justified and ultimately arresting three members of the family.

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You can watch the footage of the confrontation, which has been viewed more than 2 million times after it was posted on Facebook, below:

According to the same NBC affiliate that reported the Collie tape, a black woman identified as Jacqueline Craig called police to report an assault against her 7-year-old son by a white neighbor.

Instead of helping the family, the officer was confrontational. When Craig explained the allegation to the officer—that the neighbor assaulted the 7-year-old after he said that the boy littered and then was “defying him” by refusing to pick up the paper—the officer responded, "Why don't you teach your son not to litter?"

Craig explained a very basic aspect of the law to the officer: "It doesn't matter if he did or didn't, it doesn't give him the right to put his hands on him."

The officer responded, "Why not?"

At this point the situation escalated to violence, the arrests of Craig and two of her teenage daughters.

The family’s attorney Lee Merritt told the NBC affiliate that the family wanted the charges leveled against the family dismissed, the person who allegedly committed the assault on the boy arrested and charged, and the officer dismissed from his job and prosecuted.

About 150 people came out last week to protest on behalf of the Craig family outside of the old Tarrant County courthouse, the NBC affiliate reported.