Video: Four California Cops Slam Crying Black Teen to Ground for Jaywalking
On Tuesday, a Facebook user in Stockton, California uploaded a disturbing viral video showing a large group of police officers violently forcing a 16-year-old student to the ground. The teen’s alleged offense? Jaywalking.
“The kid got stopped for ‘jaywalking’ when he barely stepped out of the bus he was 2 feet away from the sidewalk,” wrote bystander Edgar Avendaño, who recorded the footage:
The cop was telling him to take a sit but the teen kept walking to his bus but the cop kept grabbing his arm & the kid took off the cop’s hand off his arm so the cop took out his baton & that’s when I started recording because everything happened too quick. He didn’t have to hit the kid with the baton & no need to call about 20 cops. And as you can see his body cam is on the floor. Smh
“For safety reasons, the officer told the young man to get on the sidewalk,” a police spokesperson later told Vice News. “After the teenager refused to comply and used obscene language, the officer went over and a there was a scuffle.”
“I feel traumatized,” said the student, Emilio Mayfield, who tells KOVR he was on his way to school at the time of the arrest. “I was beaten and slammed on the floor.”
According to the station, Mayfield and his family have since met with the president of Stockton’s chapter of the NAACP.