An eyewitness in La Jolla, a tony neighborhood in San Diego, captured several San Diego police officers pummeling a Black, homeless man during an arrest.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Nicole Bansal, stopped her car at about 9 a.m. in the middle of La Jolla, near the University of California San Diego, and took her phone out to record the incident. She posted the video on her Instagram page.
“It’s so excessive and unnecessary,” Bansal told the Times.
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In a statement released Wednesday, San Diego Police Department spokesman Lt. Shawn Takeuchi said the 34-year-old man was ignoring officers when they confronted him about urinating in public, adding that they’re investigating the body-camera video from the arrest.
“From a distance, the officers tried to talk to the man. The officers decided to approach the man because urinating in public violates the law,” Takeuchi wrote. “The man would not stop to speak with officers therefore an officer held the man to detain him.”
Bansal told the Times that she lives in the area and has seen the man while walking her dog talking to himself, but she says, she never felt threatened by him. She explains that when she began recording Wednesday, the officers made “no movement to de-escalate” the situation.
The video shows the man, who is barefoot and wearing a life jacket around his neck, being repeatedly punched by officers in the face and body as he’s being held on the ground.
Takeuchi wrote in a statement that the man refused to comply with commands and was resisting arrest. He was eventually taken to the hospital and then released and booked into county jail on suspicion of three felony counts of battery on a police officer and a misdemeanor related to throwing one of the officers’ radios.
The Times reports he is still in jail on $20,000 bail.
Homelessness advocate, Amie Zamudio, who works to house unsheltered people in the La Jolla and Pacific Beach areas, told the Times she was working Thursday to post bail for the man. She said she had worked with him previously to find temporary shelter.
Zamudio called the incident a double dose of “police harassment ... to be Black and profiled, and to be homeless and profiled.”
