A Michigan judge has ordered a former Burton Police officer to stand trial on a charge of ethnic intimidation, ABC12 reported.
Eric Freeman, 41, was charged in relation to an arrest where he called a Black man a racial slur and slapped him in the face. Freeman resigned from the force after the incident, which occurred on Feb. 1.
According to reports, the man rear-ended Freeman while he was driving an unmarked vehicle. The man then fled and was later tracked down, when he back into Freeman's vehicle, striking his vehicle a second time. When the man was being apprehended by police on the scene, Freeman walked up to him and slapped the man in the face before calling him the N-word.
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“Freeman came up to him and leaned down and said some things to him, one of which was, ‘You ran from the wrong individual, I’m a cop,’ and then he slapped him across the face and uttered the N-word,” Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton told TV5. “And all of this was caught on body camera and reported by other officers who were present, who recognized that this was totally inappropriate conduct.”
Ethnic intimidation is a felony punishable by up to two years in prison.