This isn't the first time Lt. Michael Dwain Denton has been accused of excessive force.

This isn't the first time Lt. Michael Dwain Denton has been accused of excessive force.

Nowata County prosecutors charged Owasso Police Lt. Michael Dwain Denton, 49, with assault and battery with a deadly weapon, a felony, and reckless conduct with a firearm, a misdemeanor, stemming from the arrest of Cody Mathews of Glenpool on June 14. Denton used a shotgun to beat Mathews with “unlawful and felonious intent,” prosecutors claim in the charges. He demonstrated a “conscious disregard” for the safety of other law enforcement officers and created a “situation of unreasonable risk” by striking a uniformed Nowata police officer and Mathews with the end of a shotgun, according to the charges.

A Tulsa police officer has been suspended and officially charged after video shows him repeatedly hitting a high speed car chase suspect with both the barrel and the butt of a shotgun. Those are strong words from the prosecutor. Watch as Owasso Police Lt. Michael Dwain Denton inexplicably endangered fellow officers and repeatedly bashed Cody Matthews, who appeared to be surrendering and trying to either put his hands up or cover his head from the repeated blows:

This was not the first time Lt. Denton had been involved in an excessive force case:



Denton was fired in 2011 for violating the department’s use-of-force policy in actions that also were recorded on police video, but he later was reinstated by an arbitrator, and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld that reinstatement. In the past year, the city of Owasso has paid Denton more than $366,000 related to that firing.

In that case, Lt. Denton was seen on video stepping on his head, bending his handcuffed arm behind his head, dragging him into a doorframe and finally elbowing the handcuffed detainee three times in the face . WATCH:

Lt. Denton seems like exactly the kind of police officer Oklahoma residents can't afford to keep on the payroll.