Two Georgia police officers were fired on Thursday after an investigation into body camera footage that shows them using a coin flip app to decide whether to arrest a woman they had pulled over in a traffic stop.
Rusty Grant, the police chief in Roswell, Georgia, told NBC, “This isn’t a police procedure, to bring a coin flip, whether it’s an app or an actual coin toss—that’s not part of that decision making to decide to take someone’s freedom.”
On April 7, officers Courtney Brown and Kristee Wilson pulled over Sarah Webb, who was driving 85 mph on a road with a speed limit of 45. Webb claimed she was late for her job at a hair salon. The officers did not have speed detection, so they had the option to apprehend her or let her go. Upon consulting the coin-flip app, Brown and Wilson decided to arrest her for reckless driving, speeding, and driving too fast for the weather conditions.
In the video, Webb can be heard saying, “Why am I being arrested?” and crying. She was reportedly unaware that the coin flip had determined her fate at the time. “These are people who are supposed to protect us, and instead are treating our freedom and our lives like games,” she later told NBC, “It’s disgusting. It’s scary to think police officers do stuff like this.”
Two months later, local news station 11Alive conducted an investigation that uncovered the body camera footage of the arrest. When reporters began asking questions, the department put Brown and Wilson on administrative leave. The prosecutor assigned to Webb’s case also dropped all charges.
The police chief issued a termination letter this week, which asserted that Brown and Wilson had “engaged in conduct on or off duty which adversely affects the efficiency of the department and has a tendency to destroy public respect for the employee or the department.”
Tweet Share Share Comment
