Dallas PD Uses Facebook to Post Videos of Officer's Assault, Chief Brown's Address

Late yesterday, Dallas Police sent word about a story you've no doubt seen plenty of since: Late on January 27, DPD Officer Quaitemes Williams kicked in the face and used pepper spray on a handcuffed man named Rodarick Lyles, who'd been pulled over by another officer for driving with a suspended license. Williams was fired yesterday, then arrested on an official oppression charge and taken to Dallas County Jail. Officer Hiram Soler, who'd initiated the traffic stop, was suspended for 10 days for entering inaccurate, false or improper information on a police report.

The DPD's media release also noted that the FBI Civil Rights Division was given a dash-cam video in order to review the incident, and that media would be provided with a copy as well. At the very bottom of the release it also noted: "These documents will also be available to the public through the Police Department's Facebook page." And, sure enough, last night DPD posted all 19 minutes and 38 seconds of the traffic stop, followed shortly thereafter by DPD Chief David Brown's 19-minute address to the media.

DPD spokesman Senior Corporal Kevin Janse says this is first time the department's posted dash-cam video to its Facebook page, but it won't be the last: "We just now are getting a social media officer who will be over YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Nixle, all that," he tells Unfair Park this morning. "She's brand-new, and that's the direction we're headed. It'll be at the discretion of the chief, but something big like this will go up there. The Ryan Moats thing would have been on there if we'd had that capability back then. But that's the way Chief Brown wants to go."

Janse reminds: Social media's assisted in the capture of "three bad guys" in recent weeks, including Robert Louis Jones, seen holding up that T-Mobile store. And, matter of fact, Janse says: He's finishing up a press release at this very moment that says someone -- sounds like a family member -- saw the YouTube clip of the gunmen storming the Metro PCS store and came forward to say whodunnit. "They made an arrest last night," Janse says. "We're three for three."