A video appears to show a Westland Police Officer using a Taser on a man as he is holding his two-month-old baby.
The incident happened on Friday night where neighbors were having a barbecue. Witnesses said police arrived because of a call about a fight.
“We were just barbecuing, and we saw the cops come up,” neighbor Kelvin Williams said. “They came up and asked us who was fighting. We were like, ‘You got the wrong house.’”
Williams said they didn’t understand what the officers meant.
“At that point, my friend Ray got a little agitated like you’re coming over to my house, my property and you're asking me about something I don’t know about,” Williams said.
According to witnesses, Ray Brown then began to argue with officers. Williams said that is when he decided to record video on his cell phone.
In the video, officers told Brown was going to be arrested, then ordered Brown's son to be taken away from the scene.
“That’s my child. He can be exactly where he’s at. Give me my child. Give me my child,” Brown said.
Officers then crowd into Brown with a taser out. Nichole Skidmore, Brown’s girlfriend, and mother of two-month-old Christopher tried to take the baby.
It appears in the video that Brown was still holding Christopher and in the process of passing him to Skidmore when officers deployed a Taser.
“I had to catch the baby," Skidmore said. "I was in the street talking with the cops. I had to come over. The taser is on this side of him, and the baby is over here. As soon as they start tasing him the baby flew out of his hands and I had to grab him, or he would have fell.”
Brown was arrested and placed in custody soon after that.
According to a Facebook post by the Westland Police Community Partnership, Brown attempted to grab his child only after learning he would be arrested. The department says that officers chose to deploy a Taser due to the "close quarters," and that the child was also in the hands of the mother at the time the Taser was used.
The Community Partnership also stated that a "thorough internal investigation" would be conducted.
