Six Atlanta cops were arrested on charges ranging from assault to excessive force and battery for their handling of two black students during George Floyd demonstrations.
The arrests were made after bodycam video footage showed they tasered two black students after shouting orders, smashing the driver's side window of a car, and pulling Taniyah Pilgrim and Messiah Young out of the sedan, the U.K.'s Daily Mail reported.
Two of the cops, both black men, were already fired by Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms before their arrest, while four other men (three black, one white) were assigned to desk duty.
The arrests and charges:
- Fired officer Mark Gardener (aggravated assault).
- Fired officer Ivory Streeter (aggravated assault and pointing a gun at another person in excessive force).
- Officer Roland Claud (criminal trespass).
- Lonnie Hood (aggravated assault and a count of battery).
- Armon Jones (aggravated battery and aiming a pistol at another person).
- Willie Sauls (aggravated assault and criminal trespass).
"I feel a little safer now that these monsters are off the street and no longer able to terrorize anyone else," said Young, 22, who was caught in traffic with Pilgrim, 20, per the Mail.
Pilgrim was released without charges and Mayor Bottoms was planning to order the charges against Young to be dropped in the case, which reported he attempted to elude police and was driving with a suspended license. The officers shouting "he got a gun" on the video as they tased him.
"There is no justification, none whatsoever, for what they did to them and for what the system did to them," Young's lawyer Mawuli Davis said, per the report. "If there was a gun, best believe this would have had a very different outcome."