It Takes 9 Stockton Officers To Arrest 1 Teen For Jaywalking
Stockton Police Chief Eric Jones
A jaywalking arrest attempt by police in the California city of Stockton escalated to the use of force on a black teenager. Video posted Wednesday to YouTube shows a Stockton police officer hitting the teen several times with his baton before several other officers get involved.
Witnesses told a Russia Today reporter that the unidentified cop was telling the teenager to sit down — possibly to write him a ticket for improperly crossing the street to catch a city bus. But when the teenager continued walking to his bus, the officer grabbed him and took out his baton.
The footage begins with the officer restraining the young man and then starting to beat the teenager with a baton. “It’s a [expletive] kid!” a woman watching the encounter shouted to the officer, as a group of onlookers gathered. “Get off him! He’s been jaywalking! Leave him alone, he didn’t do anything wrong!”
The officer is heard telling the teen to “stop resisting.” At some point, the officer radioed for backup, and at least eight other officers arrived on the scene.
The video shows the teen seemingly in shock over the encounter, holding his face in his hands. But when the backup officers arrived, they approached the teen and wrestled him to the ground. Another four officers attempt to cordon off the scene from the public, the video shows.
In the end, nine officers were involved in detaining the jaywalker. The teenager was handcuffed and marched to a police car, footage shows.
Similar uses of force by Stockton police have been reported in recent years. At the height of the initialBlack Lives Matter protests, Stockton cases involving the shooting deaths of at least three unarmed black and Hispanic men were the subject of local demonstrations.
