Texas police on Thursday dropped resisting arrest and other charges levied against a mother and two daughters, ages 19 and 15, the same day leaked bodycam footage of the incident surfaced. The video shows a Fort Worth police officer manhandling children, questioning the mother’s parenting skills, and not taking any action against a man the mother accused of assaulting her 7-year-old son.
The video, leaked to the Associated Press by the family’s attorney who declined to say where he got it, shows Officer William Martin responding to mother Jacqueline Craig’s call to police. The woman had accused her neighbor, Itamar Vardi, of assaulting her son because he threw some trash on the ground by his residence.
The officer, according to the video, grills the mother on her parenting skills, and she erupts in anger. That set the stage for the officer to pull a Taser, order her and others in the area to the ground, and to use force to quell the situation. The development is the latest example of how the publication of body cam footage or cell phone video is altering the criminal justice system at a time when more and more police agencies are deploying these video recorders.
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Source: Ars Technica – Bodycam footage leaks, resisting arrest charges dropped