An Orange, Texas police officer was caught on his body camera assaulting a homeowner, when the man questioned why the officer was on his property.
Officer Dylan Mulhollan had pulled over a man on a bicycle over on Ronald Warnell’s property for not having a reflector. When Warnell wanted to know what was going on, and why the officer was there, things escalated quickly.
> “Sir, can you back up please?” Officer Mulhollan asked.
> “Hold on, man; you are on my property now.” Warnell responded.
> “No, no. It’s my property right now,” the officer asserted.
> “It’s not your property; you need to get your laws straight, brother.” Warnell responded.
The officer appears to be becoming increasingly agitated with the homeowner.
> “He [the man on a bicycle] pulled on your property. I followed him on a traffic stop. Now back up!” Mulhollan demands.
> “Make me.” Warnell, who is on his own property and has not broken any laws asserts, standing his ground.
> “Make you? OK.” Mulhollan proclaims as the argument continues. “Go ahead and put your hands behind your back.”
> “I said, no.” Warnell proclaims.
> “You said ‘no’? OK.”
At this point, the unhinged officer shoves Warnell to the ground as he put his hands in the air. The man, who is in his 60’s, fell backwards nearly smashing his head on the concrete sidewalk.
“All of a sudden, he just bum-rushed and knocked me down, and almost hit my head, and started to wail on me,” Warnell told [__News 8__](http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/texas-news/2015/07/08/body-camera-captures-officer-shoving-homeowner/29885569/), the local ABC affiliate.
The station also obtained a letter Mulhollan’s supervisor, Capt. C.A. Stephenson that states that the officer was out of line and should have “calmly dealt with Warnell”.
> “An officer should be expected to communicate with citizens without seeing every citizen being as a criminal or a threat,” Stephenson wrote. It is unclear who the letter was addressed to.
“The only thing I can tell you, if I was in a different neighborhood, a different color, and I came outside on my property and inquired what was going on, this never would have happened,” Warnell told News 8.
Earlier this week, a video of another Texas police officer committing child abuse under the color of law spread across the internet like wildfire, when the cop threatened to break the neck of a 14-year-old if he didn’t “shut the fuck up.”
It’s like police just can’t seem to remember that cameras exist, or they just don’t care.
Civil rights attorney Daryl Washington spoke to the local news outlet and told them that Warnell had every right to question what was happening on his property, in his front yard.
> “It was a situation that any police officer should have de-escalated the situation, but he escalated it,” Washington said.
It remains unclear what Warnell was charged with, or if those charges have been dropped as the supervisor has admitted that the officer was wrong.
