A Virginia police officer has
been arrested on assault charges after video showed him subduing a disoriented
black man with a stun gun.
It happened Saturday on a residential
street in Fairfax County just outside Washington.
The video shows Tyler Timberlake,
a member of the Fairfax County Police Department, striking the man with a stun
gun and then getting on top of him, along with the officer wearing the body
camera.
Once Timberlake is on top of the
man, he presses the stun gun into the back of his neck and fires again.
Sean Perryman, president of the Fairfax
NAACP, told The Washington Post the video showed that Fairfax County is not
immune to police violence.
“We need to reduce the
interaction of black people with armed officers because we see time and time
again that we are viewed as a threat,” he said.
Fairfax County Police Department
officer Tyler Timberlake was charged with assault after subduing a disoriented
black man with a stun gun.
Fairfax County Police Department
officer Tyler Timberlake was charged with assault after subduing a disoriented black
man with a stun gun. (FCPD)
Roessler said someone had called
police about a man walking down a street shouting that he needed oxygen. In the
video, the man hit with the stun gun repeatedly says, “Your body needs oxygen”
and he does not appear coherent.
The officer who responded to the
scene before Timberlake arrived was trying to deescalate the situation, the
police chief said, adding that it’s unclear why Timberlake used his stun gun.
The man was treated at a hospital
and subsequently released, Roessler said.
“Our nation is righteously angry
at the law enforcement profession, as am I,” Roessler told reporters in a
reference to protests against police brutality sparked by the death of George
Floyd, a Minneapolis black man who died in police custody on May 25.
The charges against Timberlake
are misdemeanors.