Video After The Jump
San Diego police said they have launched an internal investigation after two of their officers were recorded on video repeatedly punching a man during an arrest this week.
The witness who recorded the incident Wednesday said she recognized the man being hit in the head and legs as a "harmless" neighborhood vagrant. She said she couldn't believe what happened after officers investigated the man, whom they accused of urinating in public.
"I see him around all the time. He's harmless. He's just homeless," the woman, Nicole Bansal, 34, of La Jolla, said Thursday. "He's very easy to recognize, because he always has a big orange life vest on."
A police spokesman, Lt. Shawn Takeuchi, said Thursday that the Internal Affairs Unit is investigating and reviewing body camera video of the incident, which began about 9 a.m. when officers on patrol "witnessed a man urinating in public." They then tried to speak to the man. Police declined to name the man or say whether he is homeless.
"The man would not stop to speak with officers therefore an officer held the man to detain him," Takeuchi said in a statement. "Despite the officers repeatedly telling the man to 'stop resisting,' the man would not comply. One of the officers struck the man several times."
The man was taken into custody and taken to a hospital, police said. Once he was released from the hospital, he was booked on charges of resisting arrest and battery of a police officer.
The officers have not been publicly identified.
Bansal said she saw two officers get out of a police cruiser and approach the man, who is Black. She said she grew uneasy, took out her cellphone and recorded the encounter for more than 4 minutes from her driver's seat.
"They did not try to de-escalate. ... If they had just approached the situation calmly and tried to de-escalate, we wouldn't be here," she said. "That man didn't go out to take those guys down. The cops went there with that intention to take him down ... and the resulting fight is what ensued."
Source: NBC News
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