Police officers in the Bay Area were caught on video beating up a man who was filming them during an arrest, prompting the officers to back off a high-speed chase suspect and attack the innocent bystander who was recording the episode with his camera phone.
Kwesi Guss was taken into custody May 5 by Richmond police after he heard sirens and ran to the scene of an arrest in progress, where he began filming.
He was later charged with resisting arrest, however, it remains unclear whether he plans to lawyer up and fight the case in court.
Security footage from a store in the area, obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle and posted to YouTube, shows the officers turn their attention toward Guss and away from the chase suspect they were already engaged with.
Guss became the focus of the officers despite him standing at least 40 yards or more away from where officers were placing the other man in custody.
Moments earlier, the chase suspect surrendered peacefully following a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the officers, while Guss had committed no crime.
Guss was standing on a public sidewalk across the street when he began using his phone to film the arrest of the other man.
At that point, a squad car screeches up to the sidewalk next to Guss, where a struggle ensues.
Surveillance footage shows the officer jump out of his unit, run around the rear of the cruiser, and deliberately elbow Guss as he ran past him, nearly knocking him over.
The situation escalated when Guss refused to leave the scene, and the same officer got back in the man’s face, saying, “Get out of the f–king way,” to which Guss responded, “Shut your b—h a– up!”
His ego now on the line, the officer approached Guss again, and threatened him to repeat what he just said, while shoving Guss five times, causing the man to stumble backwards.
Guss didn’t lose his cool during the assault, and he never raised his arms, not even to protect himself from the excessive force by the unprovoked officer.
In the heat of the moment, a woman who had nothing to do with the dust-up intervened, stood between the officer and the man and pleaded with Guss to move back while the officer stood at the ready to strike again.
A second officer who arrived the moment Guss was being pushed grabbed the innocent man instead of de-escalating the situation with his partner. The second officer assisted in taking down Guss by force and placed him in handcuffs.
Luckily for Guss, no shots were fired.
He later said that he sustained scrapes and bruises to his ribs during the incident but ultimately managed to walk away from the type of police encounter that has ended in death for countless Black men and women.
“I felt the asphalt just cutting in my face,” Guss told the Chronicle afterward.
He said the arresting officer tightened the cuffs so much that they cut into his wrists.
Adding insult to injury, Guss was charged with resisting arrest, which he adamantly denies, saying he “wasn’t moving.”
The Richmond Police Department has not commented on the incident.
Police misconduct has gained increased attention over the past decade or more due to the rise in mobile technology and the advent of social media.
Like many others in the digital era, Guss reportedly has a history of recording police incidents as a bystander, which is typically not illegal as long as the videographer does not directly interfere with police business.
