TEXAS CITY – A Texas City police officer has been suspended from the streets pending an internal affairs investigation for more than two months after controversy over an April traffic stop in a Buc-ee’s parking lot.
Now only KPRC 2 has new video that shows what happened before Officer Scott Harrell initiated the traffic stop on April 19.
Surveillance video shows Christopher Shull driving his black sedan into the Buc-ee’s parking lot, passing in front of a police cruiser, cutting through empty parking spaces, and pulling into the gas pumps.
“Hey man, you can’t drive through the parking lot like that,” Harrell could be heard saying to Shull on body camera video after activating his emergency lights.
Harrell, a four-year veteran of the Texas City Police Department, claimed to be parked and working on a report in the lot when it happened. He wrote Shull a ticket for disregarding a traffic control device in the private parking lot.
“I feel like you’re going to continue to commit these behaviors that are unsafe and put people at risk,” Harrell could be heard saying.
Harrell also said Shull drove “so fast.”
In the offense report obtained by KPRC 2 News, Harrell described Shull as “argumentative and confrontational,” writing that he “continued to argue the facts of the case.”
“Instead of being like, ‘Oh yeah, I messed up, it won’t happen again,’ you want to sit here and go back and forth,” Harrell said in the body camera video.
Video then captures Harrell putting Shull in handcuffs and in the back of his police cruiser.
According to Harrell’s narrative report, he detained Shull because he “would not cooperate.”
“He wanted me to admit whatever he said was right and I wasn’t going to do it because it didn’t happen,” Shull said in an interview only with KPRC 2.
Harrell told Shull, as well as another police officer during the traffic stop, that the way Shull was driving through the parking lot caused him to nearly hit a white truck.
“You were very close! They had to slam on their brakes, I watched it happen. OK, you came flying through the parking lot,” Harrell said to Shull, while Shull sat handcuffed in the back of his police cruiser.
But in the new surveillance video obtained by KPRC 2 News, the white truck appears to brake while exiting the gas pumps, then the brake lights appear to go off before completing a left turn and finally crossing paths with Shull.
“Everything he said was a lie and it really just boils down to, he wanted to use his police powers to bash me over the head,” Shull said.
During the exchange captured on body camera video, Harrell said to Shull: “You have forced my hand at this point because if I don’t go and see this through to its conclusion, I know you’re going to go to the police department and file a complaint on me.”
Harrell continued, “The complaint’s not going to do anything because I have it all on video. Everything is recorded. I don’t talk to anyone in the public unless I have my camera on.”
Harrell wrote in the narrative report that he planned to “take him into custody for the offense” but another Texas City officer arrived during the 23-minute traffic stop and provided a citation book to write a ticket instead, which is when Shull was released from the back of the car and un-handcuffed.
Shull has retained San Antonio-based civil rights attorney Brandon Grable, who told KPRC 2 Shull never should have been detained.
“An officer appeared to have a poor lapse of judgment and once he realized he was too far in to stop, he felt like he had to go all the way,” Grable said.
Grable sent Texas City leaders a demand letter in June. He has not received any response but said a Buc-ee’s representative told him that law enforcement made a similar request for the surveillance video, which he has now had for nearly a month.
“There’s been no resolution or they’re attempting to bury it. So they just need to be held accountable,” Grable said.
Chief’s Statement Date: May 24, 2023 Re: Officer Scott Harrell Video (April 19th, 2023) Texas City, TX. The Texas City...
Posted by Texas City Police Department on Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Texas City Police Chief Joe Stanton told KPRC 2 on Tuesday morning the internal affairs investigation is ongoing, and that Harrell remains on inside administrative duty.
Stanton did not answer a request for a response to the new surveillance video. Neither did Texas City Mayor Dedrick Johnson.
“This guy is the kind of guy that you don’t want running around smacking the public over the head for no reason,” Shull said. “I don’t think that this guy should be a police officer. He’s willing to swear to things that are not true.”
Grable said that based on what the video has shown so far, Harrell violated Shull’s First and Fourth Amendment rights. They are now preparing for a possible federal civil rights lawsuit.
More than a month after the traffic stop, Shull received notice from the Texas City Municipal Court that his ticket had been dismissed. The box for “affidavit of non-prosecution” was checked.