Atlanta officer charged in stun gun incident was named in 2016 excessive force lawsuit

One of the six police officers in Atlanta charged over an incident caught on video in which two college students were pulled from their car at gunpoint and had a stun gun used on them has previously been named in a lawsuit over a 2016 shooting during a police raid that killed a mentally ill man.

Six police officers are facing charges ranging from criminal damage to property to aggravated assault over the incident from a protest last month. Four of the officers involved, Sgt. Lonnie Hood and Officers Armon Jones, Mark Gardner and Ivory Streeter have been fired over the incident. 

Atlanta police Officer William Sauls was charged with aggravated assault and property damage after the incident with the college students. He also was named in a lawsuit in 2016 stemming from a police killing during a raid.

An Atlanta man, Jamarion Rashad Robinson, was killed in 2016 after a federal task force served an arrest warrant at an apartment complex in the city, according to a complaint from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, CNN reported. Robinson was shot at least 59 times, and officers “fired over 90 rounds into or inside the apartment.”

There were 14 law enforcement officers on the raid and at least one U.S. marshal, according to the complaint, CNN reported.

“At the conclusion of the shooting, a firearm was located, which the officers claimed that Mr. Robinson fired at them three times. However, when the firearm was recovered, it was damaged and inoperable,” the complaint said, saying that “one or more defendants began ‘spraying’ bullets.'”  

Robinson’s mother also filed a civil rights lawsuit against multiple officers, the city of Atlanta and other municipalities. The suit claims that Robison was diagnosed as schizophrenic, but the officers involved in the shooting were not trained to execute arrest warrants on individuals with psychiatric conditions, according to CNN. The cases from the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office and Robinson’s mother are still ongoing.

In the incident last month, Taniyah Pilgrim and Messiah Young were in downtown Atlanta when they were stopped in traffic surrounding the protests over the death of George Floyd, who died after an officer in Minneapolis knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Bodycam video shows that Atlanta police officers using a stun gun on the pair without any apparent warning.

Vince Champion, the southeast regional director of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers who is representing Sauls in a case brought by Pilgrim and Young, told CNN that the incidents from last month and from 2016 are “totally different.”

“You can’t compare those now, today, because we haven’t had an investigation on the second one to even know if they’re related in any way,” Champion said, the outlet reported. 

The firing of the Atlanta officers come as protests over Floyd’s death have erupted across the country, with demonstrators calling for widespread police reforms.