A disturbing video of the arrest of a young Black man in Brooklyn, NY who can be seen being taken down with extreme force by a group of police officers has spread across social media and incited outrage among those who watched the disturbing clip.

In the video, the young man is being detained up against a wall by another man, apparently an undercover officer in the Canarsie neighborhood and repeatedly asks, “What did I do.” The man never identifies himself as a police officer. 

A voice off-camera, from the person recording the incident, tries to instruct the young man to stay still and to ask if he is being detained. “What crime did I commit?” he asks. “You followed me and said, ‘come over here.’ “ The officer orders the young man to stop moving. All along his hands are up in a gesture of surrender. 

Seconds later squad cars pull up and a several cops rush in and wrestle him to the ground. One seems to be pinning him with his knee while the others attempt to physically constrain him as he screams, “Help me!”

The young woman who took the video, who asked only to be identified as “Velvet,” spoke with BET.com and said the incident took place Wednesday evening as she walked from her train stop in Brooklyn. The young man had been in a park across the street from where the arrest happened. When she noticed what at first looked to be one person holding another against a wall, she asked what turned out to be a plainclothes cop if he could identify himself.

“I thought the one guy needs help and his hands are up and it looks like he doesn’t want to fight,” said Velvet, 26. “I realized it was a cop because he never identified himself. Apparently the guy who was arrested said he was in the park and the cop followed him. The park closes at 9 p.m., this was 7:50, so he had a right to be in the park at that time.”
She said she knew to start recording with her cellphone once she recognized the circumstances. Before long she noticed the group of officers running toward a situation that she said was not violent.
This was the first time she had seen an incident like this in this area in the short time she’s lived there, but it was not unfamiliar to her. 

She had seen incidents like this before, when she lived in upstate New York, she said. So what happened in Brooklyn did scare her, but she was left feeling “more angry and detached,” she said, adding that she did not know the young man being arrested. “It just looked like he needed help. That’s when I pulled out my phone. It’s all I could have done.”
[Editor’s Note: The video below may be disturbing for viewers to watch.]

Rebecca Kavanaugh, a criminal defense attorney and legal analyst in New York, who retweeted the video, said that this incident was exemplary of several cases she’s had in which Black and Brown people are violently arrested randomly. 

“I’ve had a client tell me he was walking toward a construction site when he was arrested,” she explained. “A cop put a gun to his head and slammed his head to the pavement. He said this in a casual way because it’s so normal.

“So when you hear Michael Bloomberg talk  about throwing people against a wall, there is a level of brutality.”

A spokesperson for the New York Police Department did not comment or give details, only saying they are “looking into the incident.”