By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — After rejecting a proposal to move a Confederate monument, a white elected official in Mississippi said this week that African Americans “became dependent” during slavery and as a result, have had a harder time “assimilating” into American life than other mistreated groups.

Video of the scene from late Friday shows the 27-year-old black man wrestling with two white officers, taking a Taser from one of them, running a short distance through the Wendy’s parking lot, and then pointing the stun gun toward one.

Law enforcement experts say the answers to those questions are complicated and not as clear-cut as in the recent death of George Floyd, the black man who was pronounced dead after a Minneapolis officer put his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes.

While police generally consider Tasers in their own hands to be nonlethal weapons, Kevin Davis, a police officer in Ohio for nearly three decades who specializes in training, said that a stun gun in the wrong hands and pointed at the head, for example, could prove deadly or cause serious injury.

Police experts reject that idea, saying that officers facing what they believe is a deadly threat are trained to stop it cold, which usually means shooting at a person’s torso.

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