Seattle cop won’t face charges after punching handcuffed black woman

A Seattle Police Department Officer will not face felony charges for punching an African American woman in the face after she was placed in handcuffs, local county prosecutors said.

The controversial decision was made despite video evidence of the confrontation, reported the Seattle Times, which took place between Officer Adley Shepherd and 23-year-old Miyekko Durden-Bosley back on June 22.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg announced recently that after conducting an investigation into the incident, Officer Shepherd was found to have “acted professionally and with restraint up to the point where he was kicked in the head by the suspect as she was being placed in the patrol car.”

With no charges coming from King County, federal prosecutors said they will now look into the case and consider whether to bring civil rights charges against Shepherd. These types of cases, however, are notoriously hard to prove, since prosecutors would need to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Shepherd willfully violated the suspect’s civil rights.

When Officer Shepherd originally arrived at the scene in June, he was responding to a call from the mother of Durden-Bosley’s boyfriend. He arrested the young woman, who was reportedly intoxicated and verbally abusive at the time. In dashcam footage of the incident, Durden-Bosley insists she did nothing to warrant an arrest and did not make any threats.