Arkansas officer fired day after video showed him telling black men they didn't belong in his city

An Arkansas police officer was fired a day after a video posted to social media showed him telling a group of black men they didn't belong in his city.

The England Police Department confirmed in a one-sentence news release that officer Michael Moore was fired Wednesday.

In the Facebook video posted by England native Demarcus Bunch, he and his cousin accused Moore of following them July 21 while they were in town filming a music video.

"I started to think about all the stuff that goes on in the world with police brutality and all the different killings," Bunch said.

When they introduced themselves to Moore, the officer can be seen in the video saying, "You don't belong in my city. I know who my people are. I have never seen you here before, and I know almost everybody here."

Bunch then mentions his former address and tells Moore that he graduated from England High School. The officer responds by saying he's from the "big city" and not from England, a small town of less than 3,000 people.

The men said they filed a formal complaint with the Police Department, but two weeks later they had not received any updates. In response, Bunch posted the video, which had more than 37,000 views and 1,000 shares as of Friday.

"In a city in which we grew up, attended school and still have relatives, including our grandmother, we now all fear driving to or through England because of the one police officer presented in this video," Bunch wrote in the Tuesday post.

Moore was fired the next day.

"There's maybe six officers on England's force, so it's not like [the police chief] has 100 officers to investigate," Bunch said Friday in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette . "I think he was fired because it hit the media, not because of his actions. Other than that, I believe he'd still be working there."

State Desk on 08/11/2018

Upcoming Events