8 months ago
LANDOVER, Md. (WUSA) -- Twenty-four-year-old Shawn Leake says he's happy Prince George's County police have cameras on the dashboards of their cruisers. It means, he says, he won't have to go to court on charges that he assaulted an officer and resisted arrest.
Leake was pulled over in New Carrollton last May because his Cadillac had too much tinting on its windows. When he questioned the command of the county police officer who ordered him to get out of the car, he was pulled from the car, and in the videotape he appears to be on the receiving end of punches from an officer who then tackles him to the ground.
Leake was charged with punching the officer and resisting arrest but, when the tape was viewed by State Attorney Glenn Ivey, the charges against Leake were dropped.
"After I reviewed the tape, I concluded that we probably didn't have a prosecutable case...I just didn't think that, after seeing the tape, we would be able to prove what was alleged in the charging document," Ivey told 9NEWS NOW in a Monday night interview.
"I'm happy I don't have to go to court. They dropped the case so I was just happy about that," Leake told 9News Now. He was asked what should happen to the officer who punched him and then filed those charges." He shouldn't be a police officer. He doesn't know how to control himself then he shouldn't be a police officer," Leake said.
The Prince George's County Police Department is upset the charges against Leake were dropped. Captain Misty Mints said "I reviewed the tape. I saw the tape. The officer was speaking professionally and courteously to the violator, calling him "Sir" the entire time, even up until the point where he asked the violator to step outside the vehicle. We could not see inside the vehicle but the violator was allegedly holding on to the steering wheel and refusing to get out of the vehicle at the officers request."
"Before he was removed from the car he was holding on to the steering wheel. Obviously, that is resisting. At that point the officer felt that his safety was in danger. He had asked the violator to step from the car, which was his legal right to do so, and that person displayed a resistance from the get-go before he even got out of the car by holding on to the steering wheel and not getting out of the car as requested by the officer," Mints said.The officer was involved in a shooting incident later in the year and is on paid leave while investigations explore his behavior in both the Leake case, and in the shooting.
