On June 15, 2015, Breaion King, an African American elementary school teacher, was approached by Austin police officer Bryan Richter in a parking lot.
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King then returned to her vehicle but allegedly did not close the door.
“Why are so many people afraid of black people?”
“I can tell you those comments are not consistent with the expectations, the mindset, that we want of our folks”, says Acevedo.
“I have a desire for us to come together as a nation, we need to have open discussions on the way people genuinely feel”.
The Travis County district attorney’s office is considering taking the case to a grand jury, the newspaper reported.
Art Acevedo, the police chief in the Texas capital, said his department was looking into the June 2015 incident involving a 26-year-old school teacher, caught on police vehicle videos that were broadcast by a local television station on Thursday night. Spraldin was not punished for his comments. The officer claimed that King was “uncooperative” and was uncomfortable with the fact that her feet were out of the vehicle.
In the days following her arrest, not even family knew what had happened. “Because he didn’t know who I was”.
The officers of the incident are reportedly under investigation but are still actively working at “desk jobs”.
At a press conference Thursday, Acevedo apologized to King for the officer’s actions. But, he intends to review their behavior over the past year, to see if similar episodes of violence occurred. King has hired a lawyer for a possible lawsuit against the department.
“A group of people looked at this video and thought nothing was wrong with it”. But upon reviewing the dashcam video, prosecutors dismissed the charges.
“I know a lot of people look up to me so it was embarrassing, you know, my students, I felt like I was letting them down, I felt like I was letting my family down, my organization down, and I felt like I let myself down”, King said. “Violent tendencies. And I want you to think about that”, the officer responds in a recording from inside the police vehicle.
“Am I treating someone because they’re speeding to lunch like they just robbed the bank? Is that how I want my loved ones to be treated when they’re in a hurry?”
It was not clear why the Austin incident surfaced more than a year later. The 17-year-old was walking naked and unarmed through his neighborhood when officer Geoffrey Freeman, 41, shot and killed him, claiming Joseph charged at him – an allegation that could not be confirmed. Freeman was sacked from the police, but a grand jury declined to indict him.
An Austin Police Department public information officer referred ABC News’ questions Friday to the Austin Police Association. “That’s alarming”, Moore said.
He goes on to say that white people are afraid of black people because “99% of the time you hear about stuff like that it is the black community being violent”.
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Acevedo’s response to the video, and the meeting between officers and activists, has left community members like Moore “still hopeful, but with a cloud of doubt over our heads” that trust between black people and police in the Texas capital can be formed. A community oversight board, de-escalation training, and opportunities for officers to bond with community members outside police work are ways to strive toward healing, he said. “What’s going on, how is this hurting you, why is this hurting you and what can we do to take away the fear?” In the video, the two have an exchange, Richter asking King to put her feet in the vehicle.
