An Indiana deputy constable has been fired after he was seen on video racially profiling two innocent African-American men.
The video was allegedly recorded on November 12, outside the Nordstrom Rack in Indianapolis' Rivers Edge shopping center. The footage, filmed by cousins Aaron Blackwell and Durell Cunningham, shows a tense exchange with a police officer named Daryl Jones.
The incriminating footage can be seen in the news report below:Jones (working at a part-time security guard at the shopping mall) confronted the two men while they sat in the car park, demanding to see their IDs.
When Blackwell and Cunningham refused to comply with Jones' command and asked what they were being accused of, Jones began berating them and making threats. Blackwell filmed the encounter on his phone and uploaded it to YouTube, where it quickly went viral.
In the video, Jones can be heard stating: "I've got my rights to do anything I want to do, I'm a police officer!" He later shouts: "Don't threaten me. Are you threatening me? Are you going to threaten me? Are you crazy? Are you going to threaten a police officer?"
According to a recent report by CNN, Jones has since been fired from the Lawrence Township police department as a result of the video.
Meanwhile, Aaron Blackwell told CNN interviewers that: "We still have the same practices as far as law enforcement in the city - where we are profiled racially, where we are looked at closer and we are more likely to have a run-in whether we did something or not. No law enforcement should abuse their authority like this."
He added: "Nothing I say can change the video. I don't know if that guy was having a bad day, but he stepped over the line and he violated us... But what's important to me and my cousin is that it's out there and people are aware of it."