Officers accused of beating woman

Two Texas police officers are off the job after surveillance video surfaced of the men allegedly beating a woman inside the police station.

Those two white officers were fired for slamming an African-American woman's head into a counter and wrestling her to the ground over a $150 traffic fine. It happened in Jasper, a town with an infamous history of race violence.

Keyarika Diggles was so frightened she was initially afraid to report what happened to her.

"I thought they were going to kill me and I cried and I cried and I cried and nobody came," Diggles said.

She was arrested May 5 in Jasper for an unpaid traffic ticket. She says Jasper police officer Rick Grissom was courteous at first, allowing her to call her mother, but then she says Grissom snapped and cut off the call.

"And he said, 'I've been waiting here all this time when I could have been out patrolling, waiting on you. This is stupid.' And he just went to cussing, and I was like, 'Well you don't have to yell at me.'"

At that point, the video shows a second officer, Ryan Cunningham, coming in to handcuff Diggles. When she apparently raised one of her hands, Cunningham grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face into the counter.

"I screamed and hollered for somebody to help me and I thought the dispatcher was coming to help me, and she just stood there like she didn't know what to do," said Diggles. "I don't know if she was scared, but it was like she didn't know what to do. She just stood there and watched them do it."

Her hair was pulled out, a tooth broken and her braces knocked off. She was charged with resisting arrest, but that charge was dropped Monday.

Both officers were fired Monday. The Jasper City Council is requesting they be investigated for possible criminal charges as well.

Fifteen years ago, Jasper became infamous after three white men chained a black man, James Byrd Jr., to the rear off a pickup truck and dragged him down country roads until he was decapitated.