SCOTT COUNTY, Tenn. — Scott County Sheriff Ronnie Phillips announced he has suspended two deputies as his office conducts an internal review of a video circulating through the county involving three deputies.
The sheriff said he suspended two deputies pending the conclusion of a "full and complete" internal review of the incident.
Phillips said the video that's circulating on social media was taken by an officer, calling the behavior in it "unacceptable." The context behind the video is not clear, but it shows a woman with only one leg outside a building yelling at someone recording her. A man can be heard laughing, and at one point a man tells the woman, "You're satanic."
The woman claimed in the video that two people had their phones out and were recording her.
"I'm sick of how you people treat me," the woman in the video said.
A man could then be heard saying to the woman, "You look like you're possessed," and, "Literally no one in this county cares what you have to say."
The video cuts off right as one man said "pathetic" before the woman replied, "You are."
On Saturday, Phillips apologized for the "unprofessional manner" in which the deputies handled the incident.
"My deputies know the standard that is expected of them not only by me, but the citizens of this wonderful county we serve," he said. "I want to assure each of you that immediate corrective action has been taken by me personally. Going forward, I want our county to know that situations such as these will not be tolerated by the Scott County Sheriff's Office."
On Monday, Phillips announced new and additional law enforcement training requirements in light of the incident, including ethical communication, de-escalation tactics, and managing mentally ill persons. He said these initiatives will be part of the annual training requirements for SCSO employees.
"It is imperative that in our line of work we use proper caution when dealing with any person, during any situation. Improving our ethical standards and communication, along with, managing the high rate of arrestees and people we deal with that have diminished mental capacity has to be one of our foremost goals and making every attempt to mitigate the escalation when dealing with the criminally charged person with diminished mental capacity," he said. "It's our hope that by providing our employees additional and new training that we can better serve this population and better educate our public servants on what to look for and how to best respond."
10News spoke to two law enforcement experts who said the behavior of these two deputies isn't up to what they would expect. Veteran law enforcement captain Mark Baughman watched the video.
"The whole objective in law enforcement, and having served for 35 years in law enforcement, is to serve and protect and you're doing neither when you're dealing with somebody in that manner," Boughman said. "They're supposed to de-escalate the situation, not escalate it."
Kevin Davis is a retired Akron training officer who is now a consultant and court-certified expert on us-of-force policies and actions. He said there needs to be more context in order to determine if the deputy was completely at fault in the situation.
"We don't know this previous history between this female subject and the officers and we don't know the training history of these officers as well," Davis said. "We can't hold officers accountable to a standard that they have never been trained to."