A state trooper has retired and is being criminally investigated by the Texas Rangers after he allegedly used excessive force during a DWI arrest earlier this month on the Dallas North Tollway.
Department of Public Safety officials say that the incident involving Trooper Arturo Perez, 42, was captured on his in-car video camera. The Texas Rangers will turn their findings over to Dallas County prosecutors, according to a media release.
"The videotape is one of the most horrific videotapes I've ever seen," said Randall Isenberg, an attorney representing the woman arrested that night.
On Oct. 23, DPS Director Steven McCraw began the process to fire Perez over misconduct that included the excessive force incident, the release said. He retired before that process was complete.
Perez told officials that he encountered the 22-year-old Plano woman shortly before 3 a.m. on Oct. 11. The woman had been involved in an accident near Lemmon Avenue, smelled of alcohol and failed several field sobriety reports, he told officials.
He also told officials that she resisted him throughout the encounter and tried to walk away from him before he handcuffed her. He repeatedly told her to stop resisting or she would get hurt.
He told officials that as he escorted her to his squad car, she jerked away violently and threw her elbow up, so he jerked her toward the ground. She instead struck a concrete ledge, injuring her chin. He denied using excessive force.
"I did not intend for [the woman] to be injured in any way," he wrote.
Isenberg, a former prosecutor and state district judge, said she was not drunk and was not physically resisting Perez. He said she was trying to explain to him that a drunken friend whom she was taking home had jerked on the wheel, causing her to hit a concrete wall.
"The officer is handcuffing her and it's apparent that she's not happy with being arrested," Isenberg said. "She uses inappropriate verbal words to express her displeasure."
Isenberg, who has viewed the in-car video, said Perez pushes his handcuffed client chin-first into the ledge, causing her feet to leave the ground.
"She crumples to the ground like a sack of potatoes," Isenberg said. "Even if she's trying to resist, he doesn't need to use any force; all he needs to do is ask his partner standing three feet away to help him."
Perez joined the DPS in 2006 and previously worked for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for nearly 16 years.
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