A recently released video shows what the police are doing Birmingham (Alabama, USA) uses a Stun gun to arrest an African-American bandleader who 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 conductor’s lawyer, she said this Tuesday that this episode constitutes a case “Alarming abuse of power.”“And it shouldn’t have ended in violence.
The video released on Monday evening shows the arrest of Conductor Johnny Mims during a local high school football game held last Thursday.
In the pictures you can see the agents approaching Mims while the band continues playing in the stands. They repeatedly ask him to stop the music and ask the students to leave the stadium, but Mims insists on leading the band and responds to one of the police officers with: “Get out of my eyes”. Mims then tells the agents that the band is preparing to retire and that the song they are playing is “their last.”
However, the police threaten to arrest him or contact the school, to which the conductor is indifferent. At some point one of the police officers decides to arrest the orchestra leader and orders: “Put the handcuffs on him.”
The music stops and chaos breaks out with the crowd. At that moment, a police officer tries to restrain Mims with a stun gun.
Officers used a stun gun, also known as a stun gun, on Mims. Taser, which can deliver electric shocks with a voltage of up to 50,000 volts that trigger muscle contractions with the aim of immobilizing the subject. According to Givan, More than 140 students were present and their screams can be heard in the video during the arrest.
At the time of the arrest, Birmingham police based this on allegations that Mims had committed offenses including disorderly conduct, harassment and resisting arrest. However, Mims was able to be released on probation after posting bail.
The allegations against him are currently being investigated by the Birmingham Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, which is responsible for investigating the incident. The rawness of the video is reminiscent of other cases that have documented police violence against the black community in the United States in recent years.
One of these videos showed a white police officer from Minneapolis, Minnesota, suffocating the African American man George Floyd in May 2020, sparking the largest anti-racism protests since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in the late 1960s.