Dallas

Denton Police Reveal Body Cam Video After Stun Gun Used to Calm Disturbance

Denton police attempted to set the record straight Thursday by releasing their viewpoint of an incident this week that ended in an officer using a Taser on a man.

Denton police said they were called to the Motel 6 on the 700 block of Fort Worth Drive Wednesday at about 2 p.m. after a caller said there was a naked woman carrying a baby around the motel.

When police arrived, they found the woman on the second floor balcony wrapped in a blanket and the baby in the arms of a man.

Officers determined that the woman was in an altered mental state and needed to be medically evaluated. While trying to place her in handcuffs, the woman resisted, police said.

The man that was holding the baby then handed the child to someone else and tried to interfere with the officers restraining the woman, police said. The man, identified as 26-year-old Marcus Coleman, was told to get back but tried to push through the officers. One of the officers then used a stun gun to disable the man.

As the woman was being loaded into an ambulance, a 3-year-old boy came out of their motel room naked and wet, police said. Officers went into the room and found the shower water was scalding hot. Both the baby and young boy were evaluated by medical personnel and found to be uninjured.

On Wednesday night a cell phone video of the takedown began going viral online.

Jeremy Jones, of Dallas, shot the video and told NBC 5 Thursday that, from his viewpoint, it looked like excessive force on the part of the responding officers.

The video, which panned away slightly before the stun gun was deployed, drew dozens of comments from people online questioning if Coleman did enough to warrant the Taser shot.

So Thursday, police released the video from the body cameras worn by all three officers at the scene to show their point-of-view on the call.

The video showed the woman talking about hearing voices and staring off over the second floor balcony, concerning the officers who said they were worried she may hurt herself.

When she screamed and resisted being handcuffed, the video showed Coleman in a standoff with one of the officers, who drew his stun gun and told Coleman to back off at least 30 times.

Finally, Coleman can be seen trying to push past the officer before the stun gun was fired.

"We aren't just tasing people to tase people. He wasn't following commands," said Officer Ryan Grelle, who spoke about the video Thursday afternoon.

Willie Hudspeth, Denton County President of the NAACP, said he'd reviewed the video as well after being in contact with Coleman's mother and determined that police acted correctly.

He said it appears Coleman didn't know the woman and was trying to help her, but just went too far.

"He was trying to do the right thing, but he kind of went over the line when he started coming toward the officer," said Hudspeth.

Coleman was arrested for interfering with public duties, police said, and the unidentified woman was taken to the hospital for help.

No charges have been brought against the woman at this time, and police said her children who were taken from the scene are in the care of Child Protective Services.

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