An April 1 incident in the back of an ambulance led to the dismissal of one Benton County Sheriff’s Office deputy and the placement of another on administrative suspension.

Benton County Sheriff Eric Knox announced the personnel actions on Wednesday, April 22.

In the interest of transparency and accountability, this incident has also been referred to the local prosecutor’s office as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation for independent review, Knox said in a statement. We will fully cooperate with those agencies as their processes move forward.

Bodycam video, now circulating on the internet, shows the tasing and punching of a restrained man by one of the deputies.

Obviously, there's more to the story that I can't put out, but the young man that did that was outside of the scope of our policies and procedures, outside of our training, just completely outside of everything, and we took the appropriate action, Knox told the Democrat. With the new state law that came out with the Deputy Bill of Rights, we can't just fire him anymore like the old days; now you’ve got to go through a process.

Knox acknowledged the conduct seen in a bodycam video of the incident does not reflect the standards, training or expectations of the Benton County Sheriff’s Office.

As soon as we got a notification that there was a problem, we immediately took action, Knox said. We dragged the body camera, which takes a while to get the body camera footage off of our system, started looking at it, and we realized we had an issue. We suspended the one deputy that did the action and then put him through the Deputy Sheriff Bill of Rights and of course, termination.

Two deputies seen on the footage were immediately called before the sheriff.

I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that that young man doesn't have an opportunity to do that again to any other agency, Knox said. The female, [we] suspended her, also with a whole bunch of retraining. She's never had any issues she's one of my best people; just unfortunately, she was having a very bad day that day, and when law enforcement has a bad day, bad things happen.

Knox wouldn’t elaborate on the disciplinary actions taken with the second deputy, but said it was appropriate.

She didn't do anything of what the other guy did, matter of fact, she's on our side of the video telling him to stop, Knox said. So she did her duty to intervene, she just wasn't loud enough and didn't do enough. She didn't hit the guy, she didn't abuse the guy, she did pull her Taser, she didn't use it. She’s just guilty of being in a bad mood and running her mouth and was very unprofessional, we don't condone that either, so she suffered those consequences.

Because the investigation has been referred to outside agencies, Knox said his office is limited in the additional details it can provide, but a full video of the shocking incident found on the internet has now been viewed thousands of times.

We’re committed to respecting the integrity of those referrals and due process rights of all involved. Knox’s press release read. We recognize the importance of public trust, remain dedicated to serving our community and all citizens with professionalism, integrity, and transparency.

Knox noted his secretaries have been receiving lots of verbal abuse that they do not deserve.