A viral video shows multiple police officers in Washington, D.C., brutally tackling a Black man and pepper-spraying him after he was seen recording them patrolling the streets of the city.
The video was initially posted on Instagram just days before President Donald Trump ordered a federal operation in the nation’s capital to reduce violent crime.
The roughly one-minute clip shows a man walking behind officers on a sidewalk and recording them, when one cop suddenly whips around and pepper-sprays him in his eyes.
The man turns away, but several officers pursue him and tackle him to the ground. Another cop is seen respraying him with more mace even after an onlooker repeatedly yells, “Don’t spray him!”
Multiple cops were filmed wrestling the man to the ground. At one point, five officers are seen restraining him on the sidewalk.
According to a police report exclusively obtained by Atlanta Black Star, the incident took place on July 2 as Metropolitan Police officers were “conducting a routine patrol on the unit block of M street” because of a large crowd of people hanging out in the area. The officer who filed the report said they spotted a person with a clear bag of marijuana that appeared to be over the legal limit, which led to the arrest of one man.
However, the report states that while the officers were investigating and trying to contain the crowd, another man told one of the cops: ‘I’ll slap the sh– out of you.”
That’s when police say the suspect tried to punch one of the officers and resisted arrest by “tensing and brac[ing] his arms with the attempt to not be handcuffed.”
The report goes on to detail a third arrest that is almost identical to the first, even quoting the suspect as saying “something along the lines of ‘I’ll slap the sh– out of you.”
The document does not detail any of what is seen in the short video, and a spokesperson for the department told the Atlanta Black Star that she could not confirm which of the three suspects arrested that day was the man in the video.
The clip has been widely reshared online, sparking outrage and demands for answers into what necessitated the use of force and such a heavy police response. Some viewers alleged that the officer sprayed the man for merely recording him.
“He sprayed him for recording. DONT STOP RECORDING,” one viewer wrote.
“Heartbreaking how many police officers does it take to take down one person?” another person added.
“Im all for cleaning up our cities within the law and without violating constitutional rights. This officer just did by pepper spraying someone for filming,” one X user commented.
In the days since the video was shared and Trump’s takeover of D.C. was initiated, some of his supporters are using the clip as a basis for why the nation’s capital needs federal intervention to decrease crime.
“Cleaning up DC so maybe it will be civilized for once,” one X user wrote in a caption after posting the video.
“It’s literally a jungle full of animals,” one person wrote in response.
Others called for more details on the circumstances leading up to the arrest and what prompted the use of force.
“I’m wondering where this was and what the prelude to this encounter was. Was this guy just up in the face of the police and nothing else? Why was he recording- was something else happening?” one Reddit user asked. “From this clip, it looks like the cop just randomly decided to attack this guy for no reason at all. That could be the case, for sure, but I think we’re missing some context here.”
