Crawford County Sheriff’s Deputy Levi White, one of three law enforcement officers caught on camera Sunday kicking and punching a man lying facedown on the cement, faces other accusations of excessive violence.
On Tuesday, two more people came forward to say that White assaulted them in separate incidents this summer. Teddy Wallace and Tammy Nelson recounted rough and painful treatment at White’s hands. Sonny Albarado of the Arkansas Advocate has more details.
Attorneys Carrie Jernigan and David Powell, who represent Wallace, Nelson and Randal Worcester of South Carolina, the victim of Sunday’s beating, are pursuing more information, they said.
White was also named on a September 2020 civil complaint connected to inmate abuse that landed former Franklin County Sheriff Anthony Boen in prison. Boen was convicted of violating inmates’ civil rights by using unreasonable force.
Former inmate Justin Phillips initially accused White of similar treatment in a civil suit that’s still pending. The original filing accuses White of abusing him during Phillips’ stint in the Franklin County jail, when White was working as a Franklin County deputy.
According to the complaint:
Defendant White used excessive force against the plaintiff. By ramming the plaintiff’s head repeatedly into a hard surface at the Franklin County jail facility while the plaintiff was injured and defenseless, Defendant White engaged in conduct that was objectively unreasonable under the circumstances and not reasonably related to any legitimate penological or law enforcement interest.
But White was dropped as a defendant on the suit a few months later, court filings show.
After leaving his post in Franklin County, White worked briefly for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office before moving over to the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office, according to records from the Arkansas Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training.
Another officer caught in the infamous cellphone video has also been accused of violence in the past. Mulberry Police Officer Thell Riddle was fired from the Kibler Police force in Crawford County in 2008 after being involved in a domestic disturbance with his girlfriend, the Arkansas Advocate reported.