HOUSTON—A grand jury has indicted a police officer after he used a stun gun on a City Council member in a small, predominantly black Texas college town, authorities said Monday.
Prairie View officer Michael Kelley was indicted for official oppression, a misdemeanor, on Friday said E. Rivera, chief investigator for the Waller County District Attorney’s Office.
Kelley couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on Monday.
Police said the incident began last October when they questioned four men outside Prairie View City Council Member Jonathan Miller’s apartment about suspicious activity in the neighborhood and Miller intervened. Video from police and from one of Miller’s friends showed Kelley using a Taser on Miller when he didn’t follow police commands. Miller and a female officer also at the scene are both black while Kelley is white.
Miller, 26, who didn’t immediately return a phone call or email seeking comment on Monday, has previously told reporters he was vouching for his friends during the incident and telling officers they were doing nothing wrong.
Prairie View — about 50 miles northwest of Houston — is the same city where a white state trooper arrested Sandra Bland, a black woman, on a traffic charge. Bland later died in jail. The Texas state trooper who arrested Bland was indicted in January, charged with perjury for allegedly lying about his confrontation with Bland.
Prairie View Police Chief Larry Johnson declined to comment on the indictment, saying he hadn’t had a chance to review it. Johnson said Kelley was suspended without pay after being indicted.
