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June 5, 2013

Texas Police Officers Fired for Beating Woman Detained for Unpaid Fine 
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Two police officers in Jasper, Texas, have been fired after being caught
on video beating a woman detained for an unpaid fine. The victim,
Keyarika Diggles, was allowed to call her mother to help secure the
money she needed for an outstanding traffic ticket. But Diggles says the
officers who arrested her soon grew impatient. Video surveillance of the
room shows the officers pushing her up against a wall, slamming her head
into a counter, and then shoving to the ground. She is then dragged by
her ankle into a holding cell. Diggles has filed a lawsuit seeking
damages for police brutality. The town of Jasper became known for racial
violence in 1998 when James Byrd Junior, an African American, died after
being chained to a pickup truck by white assailants and dragged along a
rural road, his body badly dismembered.

 

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