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A second traffic stop tasering video recently surfaced in Austin, Texas. It showed a November 23, 2006 incident where Corporal Thomas O'Connor both stopped and tasered a driver within less than a minute. In May, Acting Police Chief Cathy Ellison imposed a three-day suspension on O'Connor for his conduct during the stop of motorist Eugene Snelling, 32, who had been driving his mother to a Thanksgiving meal that afternoon.

O'Connor claims he had paced Snelling, who was driving behind O'Connor, at 70 MPH in a 65 MPH zone and decided to pull him over because he had placed his rear license plate in the back window of his vehicle. Fifteen seconds into the stop, the following exchange occurred.

O'Connor: Let me see your drivers license and insurance.
Snelling: Whoa, whoa, whoa, let me get it.
O'Connor: No! Not, 'whoa, whoa, whoa.' Drivers license and insurance or get out of the vehicle.

O'Connor then ordered Snelling to "step out of the vehicle" while the trooper pointed a taser at the motorist. Seconds later, he fired while Snelling's mother, in the passenger seat, watched, horrified. In a copy of an internal affairs interview redacted by police, O'Connor admitted to medical problems that suggest mental instability. (View interview, 470k PDF)

"Maybe I did come across as abrupt," O'Connor said. "It's 1:10 in the afternoon and I have [redacted] so I hadn't eaten. And that is a problem when you get [redacted] is you're, it makes you kind of edgy."

Despite the light sanction he received, O'Connor wrote a memo to Chief Ellison that stated, "I must respectfully disagree with your decision that I violated 'Use of Force' policy." O'Connor remains on active police duty.

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