McKinney City Council tables discussion of councilman’s arrest

The McKinney City Council held its first meeting since the controversial arrest of one of its council members.

The arrest was supposed to be discussed Monday night during the council meeting, but it was shelved.

La'Shadion Shemwell was arrested during a traffic stop last week for speeding and not updating the address on his driver’s license. He claimed racial bias, the but McKinney mayor says Shemwell has some biases of his own.

Shemwell assumed his seat on the McKinney City Council for work session less than a week since he was handcuffed and booked into jail after repeatedly refusing to sign citations for speeding and failure to change the address on his driver’s license. During the encounter captured on police body camera, the council member told the officer he's going to talk to the police chief about it.

On the agenda Monday was an item to "discuss remedies for council member misconduct...including censure.” But after it was discussed privately in executive session, Mayor George Fuller returned and addressed the public about the issue.

"I have been notified repeatedly by every which method, email, phone call, text, and social media that there are a lot of people who want to come speak to this item tomorrow. Tonight, of course, we do not have public comments, nor do we have council comments on the agenda,” the mayor said. “We are going to wait until tomorrow night and hear the comments from the public and then comments from council on this item."

Since the interview Shemwell gave media the day after his arrest, he has maintained he was not speeding and was instead racially profiled. He said in a statement last week that both the initial stop and his subsequent arrest were racially motivated.”

I think that his intent was to make a name for himself,” Shemwell said. “His intent was a malicious and egregious intent.”

In a statement last week, Mayor George Fuller accused Shemwell of being the one with the bias against police. He said that Shemwell was also pulled over in March and "exchanged 32 lines of dialogue with the officer concerning the necessity of signing a citation."

Fuller went on to say that Shemwell acted defiantly stating, "If Mr. Shemwell believed that he was not speeding and this traffic stop was an act of racial profiling, there are procedures in place to pursue that claim."

Shemwell avoided cameras at Monday's meeting and made no comment. In a Facebook live last week, he continued to speak out against police brutality.

"The people of color and those who are in my community know there are disparities in who is stopped by the police and how often they are stopped,” he said.

It is too late to put anything regarding Shemwell's arrest on the agenda for Tuesday night. However, Mayor Fuller said there will be public and council comment.

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