County commissioners condemned the actions of the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday after dashboard camera footage surfaced of a Black man being beaten while restrained by half a dozen deputies.
In the same meeting, the commission unanimously passed the county’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year despite calls for divestment from the sheriff’s office.
The dashboard video shows Reginald Arrington Jr., a Black man, being beaten with batons and repeatedly called a “piece of s–” by several white deputies while restrained and pinned beneath six officers after being stopped on suspicion of violating “the pedestrian on roadway law.”
Arrington’s May 23 arrest happened just two days before George Floyd, another handcuffed Black man, died when a white Minneapolis police officer held his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, spurring worldwide protests, including in Chattanooga.
In the video, Arrington, like Floyd, calls out for his mother as he struggles to breathe.