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DPD responds to use of force incident
A man with a criminal record, says that he was tased in the eye by Detroit Police one week ago.
DETROIT (FOX 2) - A man claims he was tased in the eye by Detroit Police Officer. However, the police say they did the right thing when he didn’t cooperate.
Big picture view:
Officials say it all started when they were trying to arrest a man who had several outstanding felony warrants. Detroit police about the arrest of the man who was initially pulled over for a traffic stop at 7 Mile and Hubbell on the city's west side. It was supposed to be just a traffic stop, but upon further investigation, they discovered that the man, Javon Williams, had some outstanding felony warrants.
They tried to talk with him, but he didn't want any part of it.
Williams then ran through the neighborhood, and they eventually caught him. He is in jail, but the issue was they had to tase him, and the taser hit him in the eye.
It's not a good sight, but here is what FOX 2 found:
A week prior, around 4:25 p.m. at 7 Mile and Hubbell, Detroit police conducted a LEIN query and discovered that Williams had two outstanding felony warrants. Police approached him, and he gave them a fake name. He then started running from the cops into a backyard, jumping a fence, and again refusing to stop. One officer tased him as he was turning around, and the taser hit him in the eye.
What they're saying:
Captain Timothy Jones of the Detroit Police Department says that the use of the taser in this situation was justified.
"Well we want people to know is we have a police department that is transparent," said Jones. "A lot of times people see things and they see someone wrong and something has gone wrong. It doesn’t look well. But these officers did everything the right way. They were Curtis. They gave him a chance to do the right thing and he took it upon himself to do the wrong thing."