Police defend use of Taser on Texas councilman

PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas -- Police officials in a small, predominantly black Texas college town are defending the decision to use a stun gun on a City Council member when he intervened as officers questioned his friends outside his apartment.

The video out of Prairie View, Texas, is raising questions about police use of force. A councilman is seen getting tased while on his knees and with his back to officers. Police say he was resisting arrest.

Police say they were questioning four men outside Prairie View City Council Member Jonathan Miller's apartment about suspicious activity in the neighborhood when Miller interfered on Thursday night. Miller, at a Monday news conference, said he was vouching for his friends and telling officers they were doing nothing wrong.

"It was just concern for my friends. That's all it was, and that's all it should have been," Miller said.

Video from police and from one of Miller's friends shows officers using a Taser on Miller when he was slow in following police commands. He was tased, arrested and spent the night in jail.

"I feel like I was checking on my line brothers and I feel like it escalated to a situation where I was tased and it shouldn't have come that far," said Miller the morning after being released from jail.

Miller and the officer ordering the use of the Taser are both black.

Police Chief Larry Johnson said Monday that the Taser was used according to policy. He said his department has turned over its evidence to the Waller County district attorney for review.

CBS News' Jericka Duncan previously reported that coincidentally, the female officer in the body camera video during this incident is the same one who transported Sandra Bland to a county jail after she was arrested in July. Bland made national headlines after authorities say she hanged herself while in jail.