Austin, Texas, Police Chief Art Acevedo apologized to Breaion King, 26, during a news conference Thursday after video emerged showing the African-American woman being slammed to the ground by an officer during her arrest following a minor traffic stop last year.
He said his "heart was sickened and saddened" by the arrest and pledged a series of administrative investigations and increased training in implicit bias and fair policing, NBC News reported. The case against King was dismissed in January.
In a second video King, is being driven to jail by officer Patrick Spradlin, who is white. The two have an exchange about race.
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"Why are so many people afraid of black people?" Spradlin asks, responding to a question posed by King. "I can give you a really good — a really good idea why it might be that way. Violent tendencies."
Acevedo said he didn't learn of the videos until Tuesday, when a prosecutor called him after receiving inquiries from the Austin American-Statesman newspaper, which published the videos Thursday.