VIDEO: Police officer fired after hitting suspect with patrol car but where are charges?
The investigation to determine whether criminal charges will be filed against the officer continues.
Taylor Saulters, a police officer in Athens-Clarke Country, Georgia was fired after hitting a suspect with a patrol car on Friday
Another day. Another incident of police brutality. Will the madness ever stop?
Taylor Saulters, a police officer in Athens-Clarke Country, Georgia was fired after hitting a suspect with a patrol car on Friday, reports WSB-TV 2.
Witnesses reported seeing the suspect Timmy Patmon, who was on probation, run away—not toward—the police. There were felony warrants out for Patmon’s arrest.
Next, according to witnesses, a police officer identified as Hunter Blackmon jumped out of his patrol car and started chasing Patmon on foot.
After Blackmon’s failed attempt to apprehend Patmon, Police Officer Saulters joins the pursuit in his vehicle and tries to corner Patmon with the patrol car. When that doesn’t work, what he does next is unthinkable: Saulters reverses, swerves and accelerates toward the still running Patmon, and hits him with the patrol car.
Body camera footage shows both officers struggling to handcuff Patmon as he resists arrest after being struck to the ground.
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“I thought my son was dead,” Patmon’s mother Tammy LaShay Brown Patmon told WSB-YV 2’s Wendy Halloran. “Whoever hit my son should be punished for it. It’s wrong.”
“They were chasing him from behind,” added Patmon’s brother, who didn’t want to reveal his name. “They didn’t have to run him over.”
Saulters was initially placed on administrative leave following Friday’s incident. After the review, the Police Chief made the final decision was made to dismiss him from the force.
A spokesperson for the Athens-Clarke County police department said “they don’t believe Saulters intentionally hit Patmon, but was negligent in the incident,” according to WSB-TV 2.
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“It’s police brutality, it sure is. It’s wrong,” Brown Patmon told WSB-TV 2.
Saulters’ father is Jerry Saulters, who serves as a captain in the same police department’s criminal investigative division.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is also reviewing the incident to determine whether there was criminal intent behind Saulter’s actions.
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