She Put the Taser in My Back. I Wondered if She'd Kill Me

I stay in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I usually work in warehouses, but I'm supposed to be going back to school in January to learn welding. And I'm a dad. I've got two daughters. One is about to turn two and another is due any day now.

That's all I was thinking about when they put me in jail with a $500,000 bond.

When's the next time I'm going to be able to see my family? Especially my daughter. And am I going to get to see my new daughter being born? That's what was going through my head.

It began when I had a blowout. I was on the passenger side of the car, on the ground trying to slide a jack under to get the car high enough to take the tire off. That's when a female officer from the Reform Police Department pulled up behind me.

At first, she seemed kind of cool. She asked us what was going on, so we told her, and she looked at the tire. She said she needed to see some ID.

I asked her why would she need to see our ID if we're just changing a tire on the side of the road? We weren't doing anything wrong.

She came up with something, so I just gave her my ID because I didn't want any problems with her. Once she got my ID, she also asked for my little brother's who was there with me, and my co-defendant's too.

While she was getting their IDs, I was still asking her: What's the purpose of giving our ID? Why do you need to run our names?

So that's when she started to get aggressive towards me. She stopped focusing on them and started focusing on me. She told me you need to go stand there on my car. I said I'm not under arrest, so I will not stand on your car.

She grabbed me by the shirt and said "now you are". She started using force at that point. I grabbed my phone, which was on the car, and I started recording her. That's when I realized she had tased me the first time. I fell in the road.

Then she stood there with her foot on my back. I yelled to my friend to go get my auntie. When he took off running, she kept her foot on my back while trying to call in that my friend had taken off.

This is when the viral video that my brother was recording starts. She was getting me up off the ground. We get to the back of the car and I let her know I've got a firearm on me, because she just slammed me on top of it hard.

She grabbed the gun and she got excited. You can see from her face on the video. She laughs and says "oh yeah". I asked why she was saying that. Then she started tasing me again.

I'm like: Oh my god. Is she going to kill me? Is she going to hurt my little brother? Is he going to be OK? I honestly didn't know what to think. I didn't know what she was going to do to us out there.

It wasn't too much pain. I was just thinking: What is she going to do to us?

I'm really blessed that my brother started recording there. I feel like we've slipped through the cracks because there's a lot of dirty stuff going on right now.

After the video cuts off, she put me into the back of her car, and then she snatched my brother off and put him into another police car that was on the scene.

The officer came back to the car and said: "This is going to be a good video for us to go back and laugh at with your little b***h ass."

She had some vulgar language. She enjoyed what she was doing. I swear she did. I could tell she was enjoying it.

Then she turned me over to the sheriff's office. Her car didn't have a dashcam in it or a computer that I know of. There was nothing hooked up inside her car as far as I could see. They've got to use our video for evidence because she didn't have any cameras.

I told the officer she turned me over to that I was going to sue them all. He said "shut the f*** up and get in the car".

When I got to the jail, they usually give you a phone call. I didn't get my phone call.

They didn't even put me in a holding cell. They put me in another room, I think a visitation room. The second officer came in and told me "I really want you to try it", referring to my threat to sue them.

I ignored that. I'm just wanting to talk to my family and let them know that I'm OK. I didn't get a good phone call until the next day.

Normally they give you a PIN so you can make calls in the back, but I didn't have that. They gave me the runaround for so long with their PINs so I could call my parents.

The only calls I could make were in front of them, and they made me put my calls on speaker.

I was in there from Saturday until Tuesday morning; the day they dropped a trafficking of fentanyl charge. I didn't have any substances on me.

The charges I'm still facing are obstruction of government operations, possession of marijuana, and resisting arrest.

The conditions are I can't leave the state of Alabama. If they call and want me to do a drug test, I've got to go and do it. I can't get into any trouble or they're going to lock me right up with no bond.

When I was inside, my family wasn't notifying me of anything that was going on outside when I did talk to them. I was hearing little stories from corrections officers and my nurse in the jail. They were telling me how viral the video had gone. Reality didn't hit me until I walked out the door.

I'm scared. I want to help push the issue to where everyone else gets justice but who hasn't had the chance. But at the same time, I'm scared of all the publicity. I don't know what anybody is thinking about doing.

I just try to stay out of the way. I've been in the house most of the time since I got out of jail. Or if I do go out, I cover my face up. My life just doesn't feel normal anymore.

I'm supposed to start therapy to talk about things. I'm going to try to move on. My family is helping me with that by being around. Most of all, I'm going to put it behind me and focus on the bigger picture.

I haven't received any apologies or anything like that from the police. There is a lawsuit coming.

But mainly, I just want the officer who tased me to be charged. I want to press charges against her. I want her to stand in front of a judge for what she did to me.

Micah Washington is a father from Alabama. Footage of his arrest by a Reform Police Department officer, who used a stun gun in his back while he was handcuffed, went viral on social media. He is now being represented by the attorney Leroy Maxwell.

All views expressed are the author's own.

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