An Austin police officer who received a reprimand for his violent arrest of a teacher in 2015 was fired Monday after officials said he used excessive force on a suspect.
Officer Bryan Richter lost his job stemming from an incident in which Richter and other officers were serving a warrant as part of a special team in the department’s organized crime division.
According to a disciplinary memo, Richter placed his foot on a suspect’s head during an arrest.
The American-Statesman first reported the new allegations against Richter on Sunday.
Richter’s work has been under scrutiny since 2016, when the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV obtained a video showing his arrest of King.
Breaion King, an African-American elementary school teacher, was violently arrested by Austin police officer Bryan Richter during a traffic stop in 2015, which was caught on dashcam video. Richter is being investigated for his use of force practices.
Richter was seen on the video, which received national attention, forcibly removing her from the driver’s seat of her car, pulling her across a vacant parking space and hurling her to the ground.
Richter said in a report that he did not know whether King had a weapon and that she resisted by wrapping her hands around the steering wheel of her car.
His supervisors at the time gave him a reprimand, the lowest form of departmental discipline, but the department brass did not learn about the incident until a year later. By then, a deadline to issue more severe punishment had passed.
The department has since changed how such incidents are evaluated to ensure a proper review.