2023-09-20 05:40:44
A recently released video shows how Birmingham (Alabama) police USA) used a stun gun to arrest an African-American conductorwho had refused to order his high school marching band to stop playing during a football game.
The police are currently investigating the incident. According to the African-American congresswoman of the Alabama state legislature Juandalynn Givan, who acts as the orchestra director’s lawyer, this episode constitutes an “alarming abuse of power” and should not have ended in violence.
The video, which was made public Monday night, shows the arrest of bandleader Johnny Mims during a local high school football game last Thursday. In the images, you can see how the agents approach Mims while the band continues playing in the stands. Repeatedly, They ask him to stop the music and for the students to leave the stadium, but Mims persists. to lead the gang and responds to one of the police officers with: “Get out of my sight.”
Mims then tells the agents that the band is preparing to retire and that the song they are performing is “their last one.” However, the police threaten to arrest him or contact the school, to which the conductor shows indifference. At one point, one of the police officers decides to arrest the orchestra director and orders: “Put the handcuffs on him.” The music stops and chaos breaks out with a crowd of people. At that moment, a police officer uses a stun gun to try to restrain Mims.
The agents used an electric gun, also known as a taser, against Mims, which can deliver electric shocks of up to 50,000 volts that cause muscle contractions with the aim of immobilizing the subject. According to Givan, more than 140 students were present and, in the video, you can hear his screams during the arrest.
The crudeness of the video evokes other cases that, in recent years, have documented the police violence against the black community in United States. One of those videos showed how a white Minneapolis police officer suffocated African-American George Floyd in May 2020, triggering the largest anti-racism protests since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in the late 1960s. .
#police #Taser #arrest #AfricanAmerican #conductor