Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen West wants a Dallas Police officer fired after she arrested his wife, Angela Graham-West, for an alleged DWI offense Friday evening.
In a video posted by the former Texas Republican Party Chairman on Sunday, West implies that his wife was unjustly charged as a way to generate funding for the department’s DWI Unit and refers to DPD’s tactics as “Gestapo-like.”
The incident that kicked off this dispute occurred shortly before 9 p.m. Friday when officers pulled over Graham-West in the 2300 block of West Northwest Highway.
According to a statement from the Dallas police, “officers had reasons to believe the driver may be intoxicated,” and the subsequent field sobriety tests led to Graham-West’s arrest.
Candidate West, who was in Waco at the time of the arrest, has a different version of events. In the online video, West claims his wife was pulled over for failing to use a blinker to switch lanes as she drove home from dinner at P.F. Changs. He further asserts that despite his wife having “no issue” with either the sobriety or breathalyzer tests, she was “brutally handcuffed” and taken to jail.
Graham-West refused a blood test to determine if she had either alcohol or drugs in her system, but police later got a warrant and were able to perform the test. The results of the blood draw have not been released at this time.
In the same social media video, West shows a receipt from his wife’s dinner, which lists water and lemonade but no alcoholic beverages, and demands an apology from several officials, stating, “Chief of Police Garcia of Dallas Police Department, Mayor Eric Johnson Mayor of Dallas, and Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot, you will come to my house, and you will publicly apologize to my wife, to my grandson, Jaxton, and to his parents.”
Adding to West’s outrage over the incident is the fact that his 3-month-old grandson was in the car with his wife at the time of her arrest and that the child was left in the care of DPD officers until his parents were able to collect him.
“I support the thin blue line, but this is insidious,” West said. “They put my grandson at risk, at jeopardy, left him with a couple of police officers and carted his grandmother to jail, and she had water and lemonade… I’m beyond livid.”
Despite candidate West’s public demands, the Dallas Police Association has stated that they “back all officers who perform their duties which professionalism and integrity” and that the officer in question “was doing her job to protect the public and enforce the law.”