A Florida state trooper is coming under fire after repeatedly tasing a teenager in his girlfriend’s backyard.
The trooper, George Smyrnios, followed 16-year-old Jack Rodeman into the backyard of the Fort Myers home last week after deeming him suspicious.
In video footage of the incident shared by CBS News, Rodeman can be seen telling Smyrnios that his girlfriend lived inside and he was waiting for her to come out.
“I didn’t do nothing,” Rodeman says.
After the teenager “failed to comply” with Smyrnios’s orders to turn around and put his hands behind his back, the trooper repeatedly tased him.
“You think you can just do whatever you want but you can’t,” Smyrnios tells Rodeman as he lays on the ground.
Rodeman’s mother, Kristina Rodeman, is now arguing that Smyrnios overstepped his boundaries.
“I mean my son was just standing there on his phone. He wasn’t reaching in his pockets,” she told WINK News. “There was no threat to that officer.”
Kristina Rodeman is now pushing for action to be taken against Smyrnios.
“I just don’t understand, and then for him to keep zapping my son after he hit like that,” she said. “I just think something needs to be done.”
Famed civil rights attorney Ben Crump has joined Kristina’s calls for action, also publicly criticizing Smyrnios.
“Smyrnios hasn’t been suspended or punished for his unlawful actions against this teen who posed NO THREAT!” he wrote on Twitter this week.
He added, “He should be held accountable for his egregious actions!”