Video that has gone viral in recent days shows 65-year-old grandmother Rose Campbell being pulled over by police in Alpharetta City, Georgia for failing to stay in her lane while driving on a local road on May 4.
Dashcam footage shows officer James Legg shouting, “Hey! You are not in charge! Shut up and get the [expletive] out of the car!” after Campbell refused to sign a traffic ticket, claiming she did no wrong.
After two officers were called in for back up, Campbell was yanked, shrieking, from her vehicle and arrested for disorderly conduct.
“He told me he was giving me a citation for failure to maintain lane. I said for what? Everybody does that when a cop gives you a ticket, unless you’re wrong, you’re gonna ask why,” Campbell said during an interview with the Atlanta ABC affiliate WSBT after being release from custody.
“I felt violated. I felt not only that my space had been violated, but that he was not respecting me,” she said. “All I felt was his whole body over me and I could feel the weight over me, grabbing at my belt.”
On Thursday, the Alpharetta City Police Department uploaded the dashcam footage to YouTube.
“If we are going to be 100 percent transparent, that means that we also must be willing to share with you any major concerns that arise regarding employee performance and behavior,” said John Robinson, public safety chief at the department, in the video’s introduction.
“I recently viewed a video of a traffic stop that took place in Alpharetta last weekend. As I was watching the video I had some major concerns about what I was seeing. There are asepcts of this video that you’re likely about to watch that simply do not represent who we are as an organization.”
Legg was initially suspended during an internal investigation but announced on Friday that he was stepping down, explaining that he did not think he would get a fair ruling.
“I feel I acted appropriately and the way that I was trained when I arrested Ms. Campbell,” Legg wrote in his resignation letter. “Maybe I should not have used profanity, but its immediate effectiveness is not questionable and I do believe I acted reasonably under the circumstances.”
The police department accepted Legg’s letter of resignation but also vowed to continue the probe. It asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to assist so that an impartial investigation can be conducted.
“Our hope is to move on with our community and rebuild that trust that we work so hard to build that now some of that was lost during this incident,” a police department official a local television outlet.
Campbell said she has forgiven the policeman who caused her distress.
“Every human being deserves respect, but we as mothers deserve an immense amount of respect,” she said.
The incident in Alpharetta is another in a string of police use of execessive force against non-violent black individuals.
There are growing calls among civil rights groups for a boycott against restaurant chain Waffle House after a series of non-violent, unarmed black individuals were violently arrested by white police officers.
Original Article
Source: thinkprogress.org
Author: Rebekah Entralgo
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