PORT ALLEN, La. — A police video shows a Louisiana officer using a stun gun on a handcuffed 67-year-old man sitting in a patrol car's back seat and then saying, “Scream again."
Officer Nolan Dehon III was arrested on charges of malfeasance in office and aggravated battery, Port Allen Police Chief Corey Hicks told news agencies earlier this month. He faces a May 5 termination hearing before the Port Allen City Council, local media reported.
The video starts with the arrest of Izell Richardson Jr. of Port Allen, timestamped shortly before 3 a.m. March 27.
Richardson’s sister had called police because someone was breaking in through a window, news agencies reported. Richardson said it was his house, and he’d lost his key.
“This is my house. ... I pay for everything here. She don’t run nothing,” the video shows him telling officers while they cuff his hands behind his back.
When told to get into the police car, he initially says he's got a bad back and can't get in but ultimately sits down. Officers tell him to scoot over. After a while he yells, “Help! Help!”
One voice says, “Stop that screaming.” Another says, “Scream again. Go ahead.”
Richardson shouts, “Help! Aargh!” Then the stun gun’s rattle can be heard. After it stops, Richardson curses at the officer, who says, “You scream again.”
He does, and the officer uses the stun gun a second time.
At the police station, more than 22 minutes into the video, Richardson shouts that he'd had open-heart surgery two months earlier and wants to go to a hospital. Police call an ambulance.
The 46-minute video that WAFB-TV posted Wednesday is not from Dehon's body camera but another officer's, attorney Victor Woods, who is representing Dehon, told The Associated Press on Thursday. The station credits the video to the police department.
Woods contends that Dehon's body camera "gives a more complete representation of what he was seeing on the night of the arrest,” including his conversation with the woman who had called police.
Richardson filed a complaint on March 29. The Port Allen police and the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office investigated the complaint and Duhon was later arrested. Hicks said the matter has been turned over to the district attorney's office.
Both Dehon and Richardson are Black.
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AP researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.