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An 18-year-old’s routine vaping citation on the Ocean City boardwalk ended with him screaming on the pavement, and the cellphone video is why the whole country is now watching Maryland’s local police.
On June 6, 2021, Taizier Griffin, an 18-year-old from Perryville, Maryland, was stopped by Ocean City police for violating the town’s boardwalk vaping ordinance. What began as a citation for a local nuisance law ended with Griffin tased and arrested, his hands raised on camera moments before officers struck him. The footage spread fast online, and within days civil rights groups and members of Congress were demanding answers.
- Cellphone video shows Griffin with his hands up before he reaches toward his backpack strap and is hit with a Taser, a sequence that triggered viral outrage and calls for investigation from the NAACP, the ACLU and members of Congress.
- Police allege Griffin resumed vaping as he walked away, refused to produce identification, pushed past an officer and resisted arrest; charging documents list disorderly conduct, assault and resisting arrest, and officers say they found a concealed knife in his backpack.
- The arrest is one of two violent boardwalk incidents tied to vaping-ban enforcement in early June 2021 — the other, on June 12, involved four teenagers and an officer filmed repeatedly driving his knee into a suspect.
The Boardwalk Confrontation
According to the Ocean City Police Department, officers first approached a group of people vaping outside a designated area on the boardwalk. As the group dispersed, police say Griffin lit up again, prompting officers to address the violation directly. What followed, captured on a bystander’s phone, shows Griffin surrounded by officers with his hands raised before he reaches toward his backpack strap — the moment officers deployed the Taser.
Griffin has said he was singled out among the dozens of people vaping on the boardwalk that day and that he was terrified during the stop. His mother has been blunt about what she believes should have happened instead: a citation, nothing more, for a municipal infraction that carries no business ending in a Taser deployment.
Police Account Versus the Family’s Account
Ocean City police maintain that Griffin became disorderly, refused to hand over identification, and pushed past an officer before he was taken to the ground and stunned. Charging documents filed against him list disorderly conduct, assault and resisting arrest, and officers say a search of his backpack turned up a concealed knife.
A minor vaping violation escalated into a confrontation that could have turned fatal — that’s the crux of the family’s complaint, and it’s the same complaint being echoed by the NAACP and the ACLU.
Griffin and his family dispute that any of that justified force, framing it instead as a routine boardwalk stop that officers escalated unnecessarily. The gap between the two accounts — officer narrative versus bystander footage — is exactly what outside groups are now asking the department to reconcile.
A Second Boardwalk Incident Fuels the Outrage
Griffin’s arrest wasn’t an isolated flashpoint. Six days later, on June 12, another video surfaced from the same boardwalk, this one showing an officer repeatedly driving his knee into a suspect during the arrest of four teenagers, also tied to vaping-ban enforcement. Coming so close together, the two videos turned a local ordinance into a national story about how Ocean City police handle low-level infractions, a tension that has played out in other police-accountability flashpoints covered around the country.
Investigations and Fallout
Ocean City police have confirmed that the use of force in Griffin’s arrest is now under internal review by the department’s Office of Professional Standards. The NAACP, the ACLU, and members of Congress have all pushed for a fuller accounting of what happened, arguing that a Taser response to a teenager standing with his hands raised demands more scrutiny than a routine department review — a demand for outside accountability that has echoed in other cases where local commanders and rank-and-file officers clashed publicly over use-of-force policy.
No timetable has been announced for when the Office of Professional Standards will finish its review of Griffin’s arrest, and the department hasn’t said whether the officer involved has been reassigned pending that outcome. Until that review closes, the video of an 18-year-old with his hands up on the Ocean City boardwalk is the only account either side has to point to.
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