Thursday, The Austin American-Statesman and KVUE-TV obtained dashcam footage showing an Austin, Texas second grade teacher being brutalized during a violent traffic stop and experiencing a case of racial profiling from June 2015.
The now 26-year-old, Breaion King, was pulled over at a Wendy’s parking lot for a traffic violation in June of last year.
In the video, white Austin police officer, Bryan Richter, gets out of his squad car and commands the teacher to close her driver’s side door, but suddenly he changes his mind.
Richter forces the woman from the car after she said she would get out willingly. Then the officer swings the grown woman into the vehicle next to them and slams her to the ground face first.
According to the Austin American-Statesman, a second video caught officer Patrick Spradlin going on a diatribe about why white people are afraid of Black people:
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, when you hear about stuff like that, it is the Black community that is being violent. That’s why a lot of the white people are afraid, and I don’t blame them. There are some guys I look at, and I know it is my job to deal with them, and I know it might go ugly, but that’s the way it goes.”
In an interview this week, Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo says that the department has opened an administrative review into Richter’s supervisors and a criminal investigation in regards to the excessive force used to arrest King.
“After reviewing both videos, I and our leadership team were highly disturbed and disappointed in both the way Ms. King was approached and handled and in the mindset that we saw on display in those videos,” Acevedo states.
The Travis County attorney, David Escamilla, dropped the resisting arrest charge against King after seeing the videos as well.
