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Sacramento Police Officer Placed On Leave After Violent Altercation

Tuesday, April 11, 2017 | Sacramento, CA

Sacramento Police Department released videos of the incident, taken from the dash cameras in the squad cars.

 

Update April 12, 12:25 p.m.: A Sacramento Police Officer is on paid administrative leave and under criminal investigation for tackling and repeatedly punching a jaywalker. 

Cell phone video shows a white officer tackle a black man and begin punching him.

The video and the witness reactions have gone viral.

"Hey! Hey! Why you beatin' him like that?"

The officer's dash cam video shows the man crossing a street as a car passes behind him. The officer first asks the man to stop and then tells him 15 times to either stop or get on the ground.

The man continues walking, but, when he does stop, he removes his jacket and challenges the officer's manhood.

"I don't have nothing."
"Get down on the ground now."
"If you were a real man, you'd take your gun away and you could fight me like a real man..."

Combined, the cell phone video and the dash cam video show the officer struck the man at least 17 times.

The department calls the videos disturbing. Internal Affairs is investigating.

The man was not charged in the incident, but was issued a court date for an outstanding warrant in Fresno.

Warning: The following video was released by the Sacramento Police Department and contains profane language.  
The video below belongs to Facebook user Naomi Montaie. It was not recorded by Capital Public Radio.
Original: A Sacramento Police Officer is on paid administrative leave and under criminal investigation for repeatedly punching a man who was stopped for jaywalking.
 
Cell phone video on YouTube shows a man in the middle of the street near the intersection of Cyprus and Grand Avenue standing in front of an officer.
 
The man removes his jacket and says something to the officer while making a motion with his hands.
 
That's when the officer charges.
 
The woman who took the video captured the first punches thrown by the officer.
 
"Hey, why you beating him like that. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. He beat him like that! Why you beating him like that? He beating him like that! Oh, Jesus!." 
 
Sergeant Bryce Heinlein is a public information officer with the department and calls the video "disturbing." He says the incident was also recorded by police car cameras.
 
"We are taking this incident very seriously," says Heinlein. "We have processes and policies in place to ensure that our officers are held within compliance of our policies and the law."
 
According to, Heinlein the department's Internal Affairs division is investigating, along with the Office of Police Safety Accountability.
 
"We have ongoing training, use-of-force training all the time from crisis intervention training to de-escalation techniques to hands-on control-hold training dealing with combative individuals," says Heinlein. "In this situation, I think it's too early to determine what type of training is going to be... or what the outcome of this is going to be."
 

The suspect was detained on suspicion of impeding a police officer and for an outstanding misdemeanor warrant. He has been released.

The officer is a two-year veteran of the force.

The Sacramento Police Department has released its own videos of the incident, taken from the dash cameras in the squad cars.

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