“Last Friday in Alabama, after forty people chanted “No justice, no peace,” and “I can’t breathe” on the side of the road and then marched through a Walmart parking lot and into the store, they were met outside by a platoon of police officers waiting to pounce. Officers from the Homewood PD, Mountain Brook PD, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department and Alabama State Troopers confronted the protestors in the parking lot with threats of criminal trespass charges.

When Mercutio Terrell Southall asked to see an officer’s name on his badge, he was summarily arrested for criminal trespassing. When Southall stood with his hands in his pockets, refusing to comply with his arrest, he was surrounded by officers who drove him to the ground, piled on top of him and repeatedly tasered him.

His friend, Randall Anderson, who was recording the tasering in the parking lot, was the next person to be threatened with arrest. Not wanting to be arrested, Anderson walked towards his car. Within five feet of his vehicle, he was grabbed by an officer and pushed up against the hood. After minutes of incredulously asking what he was being arrested for, Anderson was eventually told, “You’re going to jail for disobeying a police officer.”

“* The Young Turks hosts Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola break it down.

*Read more here:

http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2015/01/protestor-arrested-recording-violent-arrest-tasering-walmart-parking-lot/