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Another disturbing video of police violence shows Detroit officers beating an African-American man during a traffic stop after he ran a red light on January 28.

When 57-year-old Floyd Dent was pulled over, officers yanked him out of the car with guns drawn and started to beat him. One officer even placed Dent in a chokehold. Dent was hit in the head at least 16 times while another officer tried to handcuff him. Another officer hit Dent with a Taser three times. By the end of this horrific ordeal, a total of five police officers were on the scene.

On Thursday, Roland Martin and the NewsOne Now Straight Talk panel reviewed the shocking video footage during the show’s live broadcast on TV One.

Martin tells the panel, “For all the people out there that continue to insist, ‘Look, it’s just a few bad apples’ — This is a perfect example again, where cops having total control losing their minds, beating the hell out of this guy.”

NewsOne Now panelist Gilda Daniels, Associate Professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, responded to Martin, saying, “Running through a red light is not an offense that you should be taken out of your car or pulled out of your car and beaten and Tased.”

She added, “They [police officers] have this mentality of excessive force, that force is always the answer. So we certainly need to look at how we are training our cops.”

Dr. Jason Johnson, a professor at Hiram College, told Martin, “It’s about time that we start being honest about accountability of these police officers, they’re costing people money.”

“These are millions of dollars in suits and settlements that are going to be handed out to all of these people who have suffered and it’s about time that people understand it’s about the government failing to protect citizens and stop coming up with excuses for idiot cops.”

Martin agreed with Dr. Johnson’s assessment of the financial toll that police brutality cases are having on local municipalities.

“I would think that fiscal conservatives would be mad as h*ll with the amount of money cities are having to spend settling lawsuits and say, ‘Wait a minute, let’s get these cops under control because it’s running into the millions and millions of dollars in Detroit, in Chicago, in New York, in Philadelphia, small towns, big cities where tax payers are funding these police abuse settlements.’”

Leadership Strategist Avis Jones-DeWeever told Martin that fiscal conservatives are “not really saying much about this and they don’t really have a problem with people getting beat down, and abuse is occurring when it’s Black people that are being killed and Black people that are being abused.”

“What makes this case of police brutality even more insane are the reports of the officers on the scene allegedly planting drugs in his car,” DeWeever said. “These are criminal activities … and I’m not satisfied with a few settlements, I won’t be satisfied until these cops are in jail.”

Watch Roland Martin, Avis Jones-DeWeever, Dr. Jason Johnson, and Gilda Daniels discuss the heinous act captured by police dash cam in the video clip above.

 

Cops Gone Wild: Detroit Police Officers Beat Black Man After He Ran A Traffic Sign  was originally published on newsone.com