by

California Officer Subject To Criminal Investigation For Beating Jaywalker

Sacramento police offi­cer seen on video hurl­ing man to the ground and repeat­ed­ly punch­ing him in the face, and is now on unpaid admin­is­tra­tive leave.

A California police offi­cer seen on video hurl­ing a jay­walk­er to the ground and repeat­ed­ly punch­ing him in the face will be the sub­ject of a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, author­i­ties have said.
The “dis­turb­ing” and unrea­son­able actions of the offi­cer, a two-year vet­er­an of the depart­ment, were not with­in pol­i­cy, Sacramento police said in a statement.

The offi­cer was already on unpaid admin­is­tra­tive leave as a result of the inci­dent and will now be sub­ject to a crim­i­nal investigation.
The depart­ment also released a sec­ond video of the inci­dent, shot from the officer’s dash cam­era at a much greater dis­tance than the video shot by a bystander that cir­cu­lat­ed ear­li­er Tuesday. The lat­est video has sound.

In the exchange on a res­i­den­tial street, the man says the offi­cer stopped him “for noth­ing”, then says “if you were a real man, you would take your gun away and fight me like a real man”.
The offi­cer then lunges at the man and tack­les him, punch­ing him repeat­ed­ly. Another offi­cer joins the strug­gle soon after.
The man was hand­cuffed for resist­ing arrest and for an out­stand­ing mis­de­meanor war­rant in Fresno County. Police say he con­tin­ued to resist by kick­ing the inside of the patrol car and had to be restrained with a leg hobble.

But after a review, police found no charges were called for and the man was set free. The names of the man and the offi­cer have not been released. Sacramento’s may­or, Darrell Steinberg, also crit­i­cized the offi­cer. “I find the actions of this offi­cer extreme­ly dis­turb­ing and they are not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the train­ing nor the expec­ta­tions we have for our police depart­ment,” Steinberg said.

The inci­dent began after the offi­cer told the man from his police cruis­er to stop after he was seen jay­walk­ing, but the pedes­tri­an ignored the offi­cer, the police depart­ment said.
The offi­cer then got out of the car and tried to detain the man, but he walked away, the state­ment said, adding that the two argued and the man took off his jack­et and chal­lenged the offi­cer to fight. https://​www​.the​guardian​.com/​u​s​-​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​7​/​a​p​r​/​1​3​/​c​a​l​i​f​o​r​n​i​a​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​-​b​e​a​t​i​n​g​-​j​a​y​w​a​l​k​e​r​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​ion