A viral video got one 23-year-old Texas cop fired, caught on his own police cruiser’s dash cam tasering a 76-year-old man.
The Victoria Police Department made the announcement late Monday evening, shortly after we published the below piece on how it was refusing to release its use of force policy.
Nathanial Robinson was just two years out of the academy. Read the press release here, obtained by the Victoria Advocate.
Below is the original article:
A Texas police department is refusing to release its use of force policy, claiming it would place officers’ lives in danger.
But the Victoria Police Department seems to be alone in that thinking, considering other police department’s have complied with our requests for their use of force policies.
Their refusal may have something to do with the incident from last month in which a 23-year-old cop was caught on dash cam tasering a 76-old man over an expired inspection sticker in a video that went viral.
Nathanial Robinson was placed on paid administrative leave, pending the outcome of an investigation to determine whether he violated the department’s use of force policy.
But that was December 11 and we figured it couldn’t take that long to read through the use of force policy, so we made a public records request, only to be told by the city’s legal department that releasing the policy “could impair an officer’s ability to arrest a suspect by placing individuals at an advantage in confrontations with police.”
Huh?
Just to give you an example of what a use of force policy looks like, here is one from the Corpus Christi Police Department, which is about a 90 minute drive from Victoria.
Here’s another one from the O’Fallon Police Department in Missouri, which serves a community about the same size as Victoria.
There is nothing in these policies that would give a person an unfair advantage over a cop in a confrontation.
Besides, no matter what these policies state, it’s pretty much “comply or die” these days as we all know.
Nevertheless, Victoria’s assistant city attorney Linda M. Champion believes this policy is exempt under a section of the law meant to protect officers, so she is now asking for an opinion from the Texas Attorney General.
Meanwhile, Robinson, on the force two years, continues to sit at home, collecting a paycheck.
Read the city attorney’s letter here. Watch the video below.
