By Nick Kirkpatrick
Usually,
after charges of police brutality, police officials take their time reacting
while they follow procedure to determine who did what. But this episode in
Knoxville, Tenn., was so extreme and well-documented that the local sheriff
fired the officer immediately.
Frank
Phillips, a Knox County Sheriff’s officer, was fired Sunday night after a
series of pictures taken by photographer John Messner were published in the
Daily Mail in Britain. They showed an officer identified by the Sheriff’s
Office as Phillips grabbing 21-year-old college student Jarod Dotson around the
neck and squeezing him until he fell to his knees.
An
officer identified by the Sheriff’s office as Frank Phillips is seen choking
college student Jarod Dotson while he was being arrested for public
intoxication and resisting arrest. (John Messner)
WBIR
reports that law enforcement responded to a “disturbance” near the University
of Tennessee where a house party with about 800 people had reportedly become
unruly and spilled out into the street.
According
to a police report, Dotson ignored repeated instructions to go inside, the
Knoxville News Sentinel reported. Deputy Brandon Gilliam wrote in the official
report that Dotson “began to physically resist officers’ instructions to place
his hands behind his back, and at one point grabbed on to an officer’s leg.”
Messner,
a freelance photographer who documented the incident, told The Washington Post
that Dotson showed no signs of resisting arrest.
Messner’s
still pictures, arranged by The Post in the GIF below, show two officers
cuffing Dotson’s hands behind his back when Phillips came over and choked
Dotson until he collapsed to his knees. Messner said that as Dotson was being
pulled up he was smacked in the back of the head, “a snap-out-of-it kinda smack
under the circumstances.”