Judah Adunbi is a 63-year-old black man who lives in Bristol, England, where he volunteered as chairman of the independent advisory group on race relations; police confronted him while he was walking his dog in front of his home on Saturday. When he refused to show them ID, they tasered him, sending him crashing to the ground, cracking his head on the pavement. Then they charged him with “assaulting a constable in the course of his duties.”
A neighbour captured the incident on video. Police have dropped the charges and voluntarily referred the incident to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Adunbi said he was returning home from a walk with his pet dog Hazel when he encountered the officers. He said: “I was just finishing my walk and coming home. Police were driving up the road and caught a glimpse of me. One of the officers came right in my face. They insisted on trying to antagonise me. I started to see red. I felt frightened and terrified because of what happened previously.”
He claims police tried to block him as he tried to open his gate. “I made my way towards the gate, took my keys out and went to go through. They tried to force it open, which made me release the grip I had on the gate.
“Then I heard this sound and felt something hit me below the lip. I collapsed on the ground. I was paralysed. I couldn’t speak or move and didn’t have any strength in me. She then told me to get up.
“I knew if she fired again it would have killed me. They tried to lift me off the ground. They raised me up and leaned me up against a garage but I started to slide down. It’s a grace of God that I’m still alive. She has done a very terrible thing to me.”
Police Taser their own race relations adviser in Bristol
[Steven Morris/The Guardian]
(via Mitch Wagner)