George Zimmerman attorney now representing Fort Worth’s Jacqueline Craig

High-profile Florida attorney Mark O’Mara is now representing Jacqueline Craig, the black Fort Worth woman whose arrest by a white officer in December sparked accusations of racism and led to widespread criticism of the police d epartment.

O’Mara, who was in Fort Worth on Friday meeting with the Craig family, is best known for representing George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch leader who was acquitted in 2013 in the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin.

In Craig’s case, she had called police to report an assault on her son. As tensions rose between her and the responding officer, William Martin, she and her teenage daughter were wrestled to the ground and arrested.

O’Mara said he wanted to partner with her other attorney, Lee Merritt, to “work collaboratively” with the city of Fort Worth to address Craig’s concerns.

Craig, Merritt and their supporters have called repeatedly for the firing of Martin, who arrested Craig in the viral incident and was later suspended for 10 days. They have also sought harsher charges against her neighbor, Itamar Vardi. He was cited for misdemeanor assault of Craig’s son.

More recently, Craig and others in the black community have called for the firing of Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald, who last week demoted high-ranking officers Abdul Pridgen and Vance Keyes for leaking Martin’s bodycam video of Craig’s arrest and his personnel file.

Pridgen’s and Keyes’ supporters have argued that they were being targeted in the leak investigation because they are black.

O’Mara said he was intrigued by Craig’s case after watching the video of her arrest. The clip, which went viral on Facebook, showed Martin pointing his Taser at Craig and her daughters and wrestling them to the ground.

It also showed Martin asking Craig, “Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?”

When Craig said littering does not give the neighbor the right to touch her son, Martin responded, “Why not?”

“I was pretty frustrated by the video I saw,” O’Mara said. “Nobody can look at that video and say that’s the way Martin should have acted.”

O’Mara said he believes that Craig and her family “need to be compensated for false arrests and what they went through.”

“But that’s just part of the formula,” said O’Mara. He said he wants the city to address how its officers are trained.

“There’s an enormous amount of animosity and friction between the black community and law enforcement,” he said. “It’s dangerous for both sides. You have a lot of people getting shot by cops, and there’s cops getting assassinated. We have to do something to try and break that mold. Right now, the Craig case is one of them. There’s been a couple dozen of them in the past five years that we can all name. For good or for bad, Fort Worth is now on that list.”

O’Mara acknowledged the irony of him representing Craig — the acquittal he secured for Zimmerman helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement, which has been a mantra for Craig’s supporters. Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King, a columnist for the New York Daily News, was among the first national media to share Craig’s arrest video, and King spoke in support of Craig at a Fort Worth church in March.

This week, protesters have marched in support of Craig outside the Cliburn competition at Bass Hall, holding signs that say, “Black Lives Don’t Matter in Fort Worth.”

“What I do is protect citizens and their rights,” O’Mara said. “It’s two sides of a coin, but to me it’s sort of the same coin.”

This story was originally published May 26, 2017 at 5:31 PM with the headline "George Zimmerman attorney now representing Fort Worth’s Jacqueline Craig."