PHOENIX — The disturbing body camera video has been seen thousands of times: A Glendale police officer hits a man 11 times with a stun gun during a 2017 traffic stop.
12 News obtained the jailhouse interviews of Anya Ann Chapman, and the driver, Shawn Blackburn, who were in the car as Johnny Wheatcroft was tased.
“I honestly don’t know what started other than he didn’t want to give his ID on him,” Blackburn said
During the traffic stop, Wheatcroft refused to give Officer Matthew Schineider his ID. As a passenger in the car, Wheatcroft legally did not have to.
“Everything happened so quick. I just know it didn’t have to go that far” Chapman, Wheatcroft's wife, said.
Body camera video shows Officer Schneider placing Wheatcroft into a control hold. Shortly after, Wheatcroft is tased for the first time.
The situation escalates even more as Chapman appears to swing a plastic bag of bottles at one of the officers, knocking him to the ground, dazed.
The two in the car described to police in their interviews what they believed happened.
“He’s not fighting you, you know, basically they were jumping him,” Chapman said.
“They tase him that many times, he was doing something wrong,” The officer said during the interview, calling Wheatcroft a jailhouse lawyer.
However, a police investigation after the incident shows officer Schneider and the entire traffic stop may have been in the wrong. Police stopped the car, parked at a Motel 6 parking lot, for not using their blinker.
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According to the investigative report, Schneider told his partner he didn't see a blinker.
But Schneider's partner told investigators he did not recall seeing Wheatcroft's car before Schneider pointed it out.
Investigators tested the scene, lining up their car with where Schneider's patrol car was.
They concluded it's unlikely that officer Schneider could have seen them turn into the parking lot.
But the department appears not to have followed up on that.
Instead Schneider was only disciplined for one of the 11 taser hits -- and it wasn't even this one.