Dunbar police release bodycam video of a traffic stop that led to a lawsuit

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Bodycam footage has been released in the lawsuit filed against Dunbar police officers and the city.

According to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia on Nov. 15, 2024, the man was driving on 10th Street in Dunbar on July 19, 2023, a little after 1:15 a.m. when he was pulled over.

An officer allegedly later told another officer that they thought he had a liquor bottle in his hand. The bodycam footage showed officers pulling an open liquor bottle from the vehicle.

The suit alleges that the first officer asked the man to step out of his vehicle, but he refused. When the other officer arrived on the scene, the two went to the car, and one of them reached through the window and grabbed the man, according to the lawsuit.

The bodycam footage shows the man grabbing at one of the officers during the traffic stop, and then a physical altercation began. Attorneys claim that the man was compliant.

The video shows an officer cutting off the man’s seat belt and asking him to comply. It shows the officers opening the door and pulling him out of the car. The lawsuit said another officer showed up with a K-9 and the video shows the K-9 biting the man’s leg during this.

Once the K-9 released him, the video showed the officers handcuffing him and then hitting him multiple times.

The lawsuit also said the man was then thrown into the back of one of the officer’s cruisers.

When medics arrived on the scene, the lawsuit said they had trouble figuring out how to get the man out of the vehicle because of his injuries and how he was in the vehicle. An officer allegedly grabbed the man by the legs and pulled him out of the cruiser.

The man also allegedly asked multiple times why he was under arrest, to which one of the officers allegedly said, “Murder.”

He was taken to the hospital, where he told hospital staff that his pain was a “10/10 on the numerical pain scale,” according to the lawsuit.

After being released from the hospital, the man was taken to the Dunbar Police Department and later to the South Central Regional Jail, according to the lawsuit.