Cops Taser black man mistaken for suspect, arrest him for asking questions

Jul 16, 2016

In a video recently released by lawyers for Patrick Mumford, police officers can be seen arresting Mumford and Tasing him, only to find that he was not the suspect they were looking for.

In the video, the officers can be heard telling Mumford that they have a warrant for his arrest, though the warrant was actually for Michael Clay. Mumford asked to see the warrant and resisted demands to get out of his car until officers Tased him.

It was not until Mumford was in handcuffs and pinned to the hood of the car that the officers pulled out his identification and realized that they had the wrong person.

Rather than apologizing for the case of mistaken identity, the officers scold Mumford for not giving them his ID, even though, as Mumford’s lawyer pointed out, they never asked for it.

“Patrick is arrested for obstruction,” Will Claiborne explains. “As a non-violent drug offender serving in a first-offender probation program, a pending probation violation could cost him his job, his college education, and seven years in prison: all for sitting in his own car, minding his own business, and telling the truth.”

Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Chief of Police Joseph Lumpkin called the video “misleading” and “highly-edited” and released three 30-minute body camera videos, though Claiborne insisted that the officers “were escalating things” in a “very confusing situation.”

“What we’re looking for at this point is accountability, transparency and an apology,” Claiborne said. “We would like for the police department to release the internal affairs records and human resource records on these officers. We would like the police department to acknowledge these officers made a mistake. And we would like an apology.”