Milwaukee police on Wednesday released video of a Jan. 26 arrest and tasing of NBA player Sterling Brown, who said in a statement “situations like mine and worse happen every day in the black community.” Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales apologized Wednesday for how his department handled the situation and said the officers involved had been disciplined.
Brown was arrested at about 2 a.m. in a Walgreens parking lot by officers who used a stun gun. Officers had been checking on a vehicle parked across two handicap spaces. Brown was not charged.
Officers initially claimed Brown threatened them while they were writing him a ticket. At no point in the video does Brown appear to be threatening or violent to the officers before he was tased and arrested.
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Brown said in statement Wednesday that the incident “forced me to stand up and tell my story so that I can help prevent these injustices from happening in the future.”
“There are no easy solutions to this problem, but there are strides that can be made to create change,” Brown said. “I will do my part in helping to prevent similar incidents from happening to the minority community in the future.”
Morales says officers “acted inappropriately” and that those officers had recently been disciplined. He says he’s “sorry this incident escalated to this level.”
At the time of the incident, Milwaukee police said Brown’s actions and behavior did not merit criminal charges and that they would review the police response and use of force, CBS Milwaukee affiliate WDJT reports. Wednesday’s video release and press conference signifies the end of that investigation.
Milwaukee police have been preparing for the release of the video for a few weeks. Barrett had said the video is “disturbing.” The head of the Fire and Police Commission, La Keisha Butler, said she is worried what the response might be to the video’s release.
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