‘Why Would Y’all Do This?’: Black Man Tased at Dallas Airport Vows to Sue Police Who He Says First Accused Him of Carrying Drugs, Then Arrested Him for an Old Speeding Ticket
A Black man who says he was falsely accused by Dallas Police of carrying cocaine onto a Southwest Airlines flight and then tased while several officers detained him at the gate now plans to sue the police department.
A video that went viral last weekend cuts in as Michael Singleton, 53, a private chef who often travels between Dallas and Oakland, California, his hometown, was struggling with several police officers at a gate boarding area at Dallas Love Field Airport last Friday and appealing to fellow passengers for help.
“Somebody tape this! I didn’t do nothing,” he screamed, and an officer replied, “You have warrants.”
“I got a traffic warrant,” Singleton angrily replied, as two officers held his hands behind his back. Then Singleton shouted out his own name to the crowd and said, “They arrested me for the wrong reasons.”
On the video, Singleton can then be seen standing motionless for a moment, as the officers let go of him and stepped back, and another officer twice tased Singleton, who fell to the floor.
“No! Why would y’all do this? He was just standing still,” a woman exclaimed, as others audibly gasped and cried.
“Oh my God! My name is Michael Singleton,” the distraught man said, now on his belly and cuffed behind his back. He gave his birthdate and repeated that he had a traffic warrant.
“That’s right,” said a police officer. “We’re trying to investigate it.”
“No, you said I have cocaine! I’m not a drug dealer!” Singleton shot back. “Hey, man, I didn’t try to fight you. Why did you tase me?”
As police lifted him up, telling him to calm down, Singleton cursed out the officers, and said, “I had my hands behind my back and didn’t even f—king move. And I was f—king electrocuted! … I just got tased for nothing.”
Singleton was then jostled into a wheelchair and wheeled away from view, as he yelled to the onlookers, “Hey, man, somebody please have this on tape.”
A New York jazz pop musician named Lizzy Ashliegh, who was at the airport, apparently filmed the incident and sent it to the Atlanta-based media network punk.black, which shared it on Instagram on Saturday, along with this comment from her:
“This man said he was being framed and to film. I later overheard that a lady was misheard by the officers and they went straight into action when they assumed ‘white powder was involved.’ I hope what she really said goes back to the cops that took him away.”
Atlanta Black Star contacted the Dallas Police Department seeking an incident report and clarification as to why Singleton was detained and arrested. A department spokesman said via email that “it is not our practice to comment on a social media post” and advised ABS to make an open records request about the incident. The department did not immediately respond to the records request.
In an interview on Tuesday, Singleton told Atlanta Black Star that the incident began last Friday morning as he stepped into the jetway to board the flight. A plainclothes officer (wearing a red shirt in the video) who identified himself as a Dallas Police narcotics detective stopped him and said, “Mr. Singleton, where are you going? You got some drugs on you?’ and then ushered him back into the gate area.
“What is this about?” Singleton said he asked several times before the officer told him, “We believe you are carrying some narcotics,” which he then identified as cocaine. “Bro, you’ve got the wrong guy,” Singleton says he responded, then told the officer he had nothing more to say.
At that point the officers began aggressively grabbing him, he says, and pulling his arms behind his back, for reasons he could not understand, and he “got upset and angry” and began to plead with his fellow passengers to witness his false arrest for what he thought was either drug possession or drug trafficking.
During the scuffle, one of the officers told him they also had a warrant for his arrest related to a traffic offense, a 5-year-old speeding ticket, Singleton said, for which he owed $500, and had forgotten about.
“If they had said it was about a traffic warrant, I would have cooperated more,” he said. “I would have asked how I could take care of it right then and there. But they were narcotics cops. They weren’t there for a traffic ticket.”
Singleton says just before he was tased, an officer ordered him to get on the ground, but then didn’t give him a chance to respond or give any warning before striking him with the taser only a second later. “That was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in my life,” Singleton said.
After the arrest, he said he was taken downstairs to the airport police station, then transported to a jail in downtown Dallas. He was booked on a charge of resisting arrest and told that he could pay the fees for the outstanding speeding ticket in cash only. He called his 23-year-old son, who came with the money.
Singleton spent about four and a half hours in police custody, during which time the arresting officers decided to drop the charge of resisting arrest, he says, “and they never said anything else about drugs.”
“I think they dropped the charges after they saw their body cam video,” he said. “It was obvious I was standing still and not resisting or moving when they tased me. I was mad, but I wasn’t fighting with them. And they may not have wanted it, but now they’ve got a lawsuit on their hands.”
Singleton said he was “traumatized” by the rough handling by four police officers and the tasing, which caused him to stop breathing initially, and made his blood pressure soar to 170 and his heart race over the next few hours. “They could have given me a heart attack or killed me,” he said.
When he walked out of the jail, he still had the taser prongs embedded in the skin of his legs and chest, he said, adding that he believes he has nerve damage.
Singleton said he has been meeting with lawyers over the past few days and plans to hold a press conference with his legal counsel later this week to discuss his pending lawsuit.
His lawyers will seek to find out who at the airport, if anyone, accused him of having a white powder, and why police violently escalated the encounter, he said.
A father of three, Singleton lives in Frisco, Texas, where his food business, Soul Hearted Catering, is based. He said he travels twice a month to the Bay Area for catering events and to visit his 85-year-old mother, his eldest adult daughter, and to spend time with his fiancée.
“I was just going home when this happened, and then out of nowhere, my rights were violated,” he said.