Two Texas white cops fired after 'abominable' beating of black woman in police HQ is caught on video

By JAMES NYE

Two white police officers have been fired for brutally man-handling a black woman in the Texan town of Jasper - which is no stranger to racial tensions. The incident occurred on May 5th at the police headquarters and surveillance footage from the day shows Keyarika 'Shea' Diggles, 25, having her head rammed into a shoulder height counter by officers Ricky Grissom and Ryan Cunningham before she is dragged to a cell handcuffed by her feet. 'The amount of force used was abominable,' said, Diggles' attorney Cade Bernsen.. Diggles was brought to the jail for an unpaid fine and was on the telephone to her mother to arrange a delivery of $100 when Officer Grissom slammed his hand onto the phone - cutting off the call.

While Diggles begins to remonstrate with Grissom, Officer Cunningham comes from behind her and attempts to handcuff her, but not before he pushes her forward and slams her head onto the countertop. The two men then wrestle Diggles to the floor before dragging her by her ankles into a jail cell. At one point Officer Cunningham yanks Diggles' shoe off her foot - causing him to loose his balance and fall onto the floor unceremoniously. 'She got her hair pulled out, broke a tooth, braces got knocked off … it was brutal,' Bernsen said to Yahoo News. Initially, Diggles was charged with resisting arrest but that was dropped on Monday according to Bernsen.

Both Cunningham and Grissom have refused to comment on the matter. Their firing comes 15-years since another hate crime in Jasper, which is a town of 8,000 people two hours northeast of Houston. In 1998, James Byrd Jr. was tied to the back of a pickup truck by three white men and dragged for miles until he was decapitated. There followed clashes between the New Black Panthers and the Ku Klux ? . And last year, the majority white Jasper City Council fired the town's first black police chief after 16-months. Rodney Pearson is now suing. 'It’s a different part of the world, man, it’s crazy,' said Bernsen

It was Jasper City Council Member Alton Scott who obtained Diggles' arrest video and turned it over to a local television station. 'The more things change, the more they remain the same,' said Scott. 'There’s nothing she said that could have justified what they did. 'They are supposed to be trained professionals. They are supposed to be above that. It was inexcusable.' The two dismissed officers are being investigated ahead of possible criminal charges.