Two Jasper, Texas police officers, both white, brutalized a 25-year-old black female, Keyarika Diggles, who was in custody for failure to pay a $150 traffic fine. They apparently felt that her phone call to her mother was taking too long.
“[Police officer Ricky Grissom ] said, ‘I’ve been waiting here all this time when I could have been out patrolling, waiting on you. This is stupid,’” Diggles recalled. “He just went to cussing. And then I was like, ‘Well, you don’t have to yell at me.’”
Grissom then pushed Ms. Diggles into a wall, before the other officer, Ryan Cunningham, arrived on the scene. He grabbed her hair, at which point she had her head slammed into a counter top at the police station. Next, the two officers violently took her to the floor where she was handcuffed. They then tore off her shoes and dragged her by her feet and ankles to a nearby holding cell. Their actions resulted in a broken tooth and other injuries. Naturally she was charged with resisting arrest. Here’s the police station’s surveillance video recording of the incident (no audio available):
At least these two lawless “law enforcement officers” (and I use that term loosely) were fired for their physically abusive actions and the charges of resisting arrest against Ms. Diggles were dropped. Jasper, Texas, by the way, is the same community where James Byrd was infamously murdered by several white men in a most gruesome manner: he was tied to the back of their pick-up truck and dragged down local streets until he died from his injuries. Jasper certainly sounds like a terrible place to live if you are not white:
Jasper’s interim city manager confirmed the terminations [of the two white officers], but referred questions about the Diggles case to the interim police chief, who was unreachable Monday afternoon.
“The more things change, the more they remain the same,” Jasper City Council Member Alton Scott said of the city’s racial troubles.
Scott obtained the video in the Diggles’ incident and turned it over to a local TV station after he heard that her written complaint against the officers was apparently being ignored.
“There’s nothing she said that could have justified what they did,” Scott said. “They are supposed to be trained professionals. They are supposed to be above that. It was inexcusable.”
After terminating the officers on Monday [June 3rd], the council requested that the pair be investigated for possible criminal charges. Bernsen said he hopes that probe is done by the FBI or state police.
My guess is that nothing more will come of this other than a civil settlement between the town and Ms. Diggles, and that these now former police officers will find employment in the law enforcement field elsewhere, but I could be wrong. Maybe they actually will be prosecuted and convicted of criminal assault and/or a hate crime. However I won’t hold my breath awaiting that outcome.
