A former Atlanta Police officer will face 20 years behind bars for kicking and beating a teen during an arrest.

Dashcam footage caught ex-officer Matthew Johns kicking Antraveious Payne during a traffic stop three years ago. CBS 46 reports the teen was pulled over for riding in a stolen car on September 16, 2016.

After pleading guilty to the brutal arrest in July, Johns was convicted of three counts of aggravated assault, one count of aggravated assault strangulation, two counts of false statement
and two counts of violation of oath by a public officer.

Payne surrendered to police by laying on his stomach with his arms outstretched on the pavement. The then-15-year-old was not the driver of the stolen vehicle. Additionally, he was unarmed at the time of the traffic stop and did nothing to warrant the overreaction from police, dashcam footage showed.

Johns can be seen on video kicking the teen three times in the head while Payne laid on the ground. The victim sustained a concussion, several cuts, bleeding in the mouth and bruises to his neck, Fox 5 reports.

"I forgive him for what he did to me, but I feel like it wrong and he should be punished for what he did," Payne said in court late August.

The nine-year veteran officer was fired July 26, 2017, from the Atlanta Police Department. According to the Fulton County judge presiding over the case, Johns will serve the first five years of his sentence in Fulton County.

Paul L. Howard, Jr., district attorney of Fulton County, praised the justice system for working efficiently to get police officers like Johns off the streets.

"Once the case was received, the judges did not recuse themselves or appoint a Senior Judge to handle the matter," Howard said in a statement from August. "Neither did they issue some arbitrary immunity order blocking the state from moving forward."

Thanks to other officers coming forward with valuable testimony, Johns was forced to plead guilty.

"The police officers involved provided dashcam video which captured the entirety of the incident. Once the officers viewed the tape, they stated their colleague and fellow officer was wrong and agreed to testify against him. The officer was fired, not placed on administrative leave by his very own police chief, his own peers," Howard said.

Antravious-Payne

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