Cops Beat Black Teen For Jaywalking

Video is circulating on the Internet that appears to show a Stockton, Calif., police officer roughing up a black male teen for what social media commenters say was jaywalking.

In the video, a woman can be heard shouting at police to stop roughing up the teen, and saying over and over, “he’s a kid!”

He’s SIX-FREAKIN’-TEEN, he probably barely listens to his own parents not to mention, it’s likely that he thought he couldn’t get into much trouble for jaywalking. Leave him alone, he didn’t do anything wrong!’ The teen, however, continued walking to the bus, and the officer responded by grabbing the young boy and pulling out his baton. Four officers then tackle the teen and arrest him.

“He was 2 feet away from the sidewalk when the cop stopped him for ‘jaywalking, ‘” Avendaño wrote in a Facebook post with video, which has been shared over 11,700 times as of Thursday morning. The 16-year-old was released to his mother that day.

The video of the arrest does not show this part of their interaction. The teen wasn’t jaywalking, but clearly ignored signs that said he couldn’t walk in that location.

“He was still in the bus lane, so he was actually trespassing”. “It was a safety issue, and trespassing according to the posted signs and the Stockton Municipal Code.”

An unseen female bystander shouts in protest: “That’s a f***ing kid!”

A Stockton police spokesman told Vice that the suspect was walking in a bus lane and refused to get on the sidewalk. “The cop was telling him to take a seat 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”.

The officer retrieves from the ground what appears to be a body camera knocked off during the scuffle.

“Anytime an officer uses force there’s an automatic administrative review”, Silva said, adding that “the preliminary investigation is showing that the officers were within our policy”.

“If people would just comply with a lawful order from police, force would never have to be used in the first place,” Silva told RT.

The Stockton Police Department began wearing the cameras this summer on the basis that it would reduce “use of force incidents.”