Frisco chef, attorney outraged after he was arrested, Tased by police at Love Field
Outrage is growing over the video of a Frisco-based personal chef detained by police at Love Field and then shot with a Taser.
Michael Singleton usually loves going viral. He showcases his culinary skills daily for his 92,000 followers on Instagram.
Last Friday at Dallas Love Field, as Singleton was about to fly to visit his sick mother, he was detained by plainclothes Dallas police officers. He begged people to record it, and they did.
Video of incident goes viral
"They are arresting me for the wrong reason," Singleton is heard saying in the video just before an officer fired a Taser gun.
"I thought I was going to die that day I was Tased," said Singleton. "You have that feeling. I don't want anyone to have that feeling, but I had that feeling like I was dying."
He said officers accused him of carrying drugs. They found none.
"I called my name out because if anything happened to me, just not the police would know who I am," said Singleton.
Singleton and lawyer claim civil rights violation
Singleton said Dallas police violated his civil rights when he was about to board the flight to California.
"At point-blank range, a Dallas police officer with his service weapon shot a Taser less than five inches away and struck Mr. Singleton in his heart," Singleton's lawyer, Robert Slater, said during a news conference. "We are here asking for common decency. We are asking for due process."
Dallas officers, according to a statement, located Singleton for outstanding warrants. DPD said he resisted and refused to put his arms behind his back, and they say policy allows the use of a Taser in this situation to de-escalate an arrest.
Slater said the video shows the use of force was not consistent with Dallas police policy, it was unnecessary and a violation of Singleton's rights.
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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Two years after approving a tough-on-crime sentencing law, South Dakota is scrambling to deal with the price tag for that legislation: Housing thousands of additional inmates could require up to $2 billion to build new prisons in the next decade. That's a lot of money for a state with one of the lowest populations in the U.S., but a consultant said it's needed to keep pace with an anticipated 34% surge of new inmates in the next decade as a result of South Dakota's tough criminal justice laws. And while officials are grumbling about the cost, they don't seem concerned with the laws that are driving the need even as national crime rates are dropping. 'Crime has been falling everywhere in the country, with historic drops in crime in the last year or two,' said Bob Libal, senior campaign strategist at the criminal justice nonprofit The Sentencing Project. 'It's a particularly unusual time to be investing $2 billion in prisons.' 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Former penitentiary warden Darin Young said the state needs to upgrade its prisons, but he also thinks it should spend up to $300 million on addiction and mental illness treatment. 'Until we fix the reasons why people come to prison and address that issue, the numbers are not going to stop,' he said. Without policy changes, the new prisons are sure to fill up, criminal justice experts agreed. 'We might be good for a few years, now that we've got more capacity, but in a couple years it'll be full again,' Kolbeck said. 'Under our policies, you're going to reach capacity again soon.'
