Moments before Marcus Coleman is tasered by police in Denton, Texas
While it's true that cell phones and body cameras alone aren't solving police brutality, they sure as hell are documenting plenty of it.
On Wednesday, July 22, 18-year-old Jeremy Jones was walking by a nearby hotel in Denton, Texas, when he noticed a woman being arrested and screaming on the balcony. Immediately he pulled out his phone to film it, not knowing exactly what was happening. Before he knew it, an innocent man who was actually a Good Samaritan trying to help, was the being Tasered by the police.
See Jones' video and a deeper analysis of the incident below.
What Jones saw was indeed police brutality, but the lies and justification came from the Denton Police Department right away.
The woman can be heard in the video screaming for help as officers tried to gain control of her.
The officer yells several times for Coleman to "back up." Coleman did not comply. He yells, "she needs help" before the officer shoots him with the taser and he falls to the floor.
"[Coleman] ignored the officer's orders and tried to push his way past the officer to get to the officers and female on the ground," read the statement from Denton PD. "When [Coleman] tried to get past the officer, he deployed his taser bringing [Coleman] to the ground."
Except Marcus Coleman never tried to push his way past the officer. He never even touched the officer at all, actually. Even the body camera footage shows that Coleman didn't lay a hand on the officer when he was brutally Tasered,
then arrested for interfering with the arrest.
As it turns out, the police were called because someone noticed a completely naked woman walking outside of the hotel holding the baby. Coleman, another guest in the hotel, saw the woman, helped her cover up, and offered to hold her baby. She trusted Coleman to hold the baby when the police arrived.
When the woman began screaming that the police were hurting her, Coleman passed the baby on to another hotel guest and began pleading with the officers to help the woman instead of hurting her. His only intention from the start of the incident appeared to be to help. Tasering him was outrageously excessive and completely unnecessary. Arresting him was also overkill, but clearly they couldn't use such brute force on him, then let him go.
The bottom line is this—the Denton police not only overreacted, they lied.