UPDATED: 3:00 p.m. ET —
A video being widely shared on social media shows officers with a Florida police department brutally beating a Black teenage boy.
The footage making the rounds on social media on Tuesday showing two officers with the Lakeland Police Department is just shy of a minute long and lacks any context.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump was among those who shared the video.
Calling it “DISTURBING CONTENT,” Crump posed the following question while reposting the footage: “What is happening here? Two police officers were involved in a physical altercation with a reported 16-year-old. We need more details from police on this encounter.”
What happened?
In the brief clip, officers in full uniform can be seen repeatedly striking the boy. As one of the officers tries to fend off bystanders witnessing the police brutality, they both are shown grabbing the boy by his hair to forcefully yank him down toward the ground. That’s when the first officer punched the boy in his face as he was being restrained by his hair.
As the boy moved to defend himself from the brutality, the officer who was addressing the bystander turned to sucker-punch the boy in the face.
After landing a couple of punches to the boy’s face, the other officer moved back, grabbed his taser and fired it into the teen’s body. The teen fell to the ground and could be seen shaking in agony from the high-voltage electrical shock running through his body.
The officer who fired the taser then applied pressure with his knee to the teen’s neck while trying to handcuff him.
That’s where the video abruptly ends.
It was not immediately clear what led to the police violence.
Watch below. The video is graphic and violent in nature and should be viewed with extreme discretion.
As of early Tuesday afternoon, the Crump’s post had been viewed more than 21 million times.
The footage was originally posted on Facebook, according to Crump.
Other users on X, formerly Twitter, posted the footage and called out the Lakeland Police Department by name.
”@LakelandPD finest punching & pulling the hair of a 16 year old boy !! This is where our tax money is going to weak men playing dress up ! heavy on the WEAK embarrassing af,” one X account said while posting the video.
“Y’all allowed 2 Grown ass Sworn Officers To Jump a Kid,” another account wrote in a post that shared the video footage. “@LakelandPD @PolkCoSheriff dem folks going down about [that]. And i really hope 1 of y’all ever put y’all hands on me. I’ll die 100 times about me. Y’all a muthaf*ckin Disgrace to the Mankind Y’all Lucky da People of Polk County Ain’t My People. Just f*ck wit me on [that] type of time.”
What are the police saying?
The Lakeland Police Department on Tuesday confirmed to NewsOne that the video in question features two of its officers and that the police chief has requested an internal review.
“Chief of Police, Sam Taylor has been informed of the incident, and has already requested an administrative review by our Office of Professional Standards,” Lakeland Police Department Public Information Officer Stephanie Kerr told NewsOne in an email.
Kerr said the Lakeland Police Department would not have any further public comment on the incident until the review is closed.
Kerr’s email included an arrest affidavit from the incident that confirms the boy is 16 years old. The incident took place on Sunday around 6 p.m.
The arrest affidavit shows that the teen was charged with one count of trespassing and failing to leave the property as ordered by the owner, a misdemeanor, and two felonies: One count of battery on a law enforcement officer and one count of resisting arrest with violence.
Police claim the officers were dispatched to an apartment complex because “several people were in the pool that did not reside” there, the affidavit said.
The teen being beaten in the video was identified in the affidavit as being among that group of people in the pool and refused to produce identification when asked by Officer Christopher McKee, the affidavit claims.
The teen got out of the pool but did not leave the premises, prompting the officer to warn of his arrest for trespassing, the affidavit says.
The teen “continued to ignore my verbal commands and stuck his hand in my face, while stating ‘I don’t have to talk to you’,” the affidavit says, prompting McKee to begin trying to take the teen into custody on a charge of trespassing.
“I attempted to grab [the teen] by his right arm, but he immediately tensed his body and attempted to pull away from my grasp,” McKee said in the affidavit. “I informed [the teen] he was under arrest and to stop resisting. I was able to maintain control of [the teen] as I guided him toward a wall. [The teen] began to flail his arms towards Officer Diaz #329 and I, almost striking us in our facial area several times.”
Conveniently, nowhere in the affidavit is any mention of the police brutality shown in the viral video.
Lakeland Police Department’s past allegations of brutality
This wouldn’t be the first time that the Lakeland Police Department has been alleged to have committed police brutality against a Black male.
Early last year, yet another viral video claimed to show Lakeland officers savagely beating a Black man who allegedly had had his hands up.
In what could be a bit of foreshadowing from the latest incident, the Lakeland cops in the video that surfaced late last year were cleared of any wrongdoing.
Earlier this month, the Black man at the center of that video had all criminal charges against him dropped stemming from his violent arrest in 2022.
In that instance, Antwan Glover was punched and tased — sound familiar? — by four Lakeland officers following a traffic stop for allegedly not wearing a seatbelt. When marijuana was found in the car, the officers began beating Glover before he had a chance to show his legal prescription for the drug, Fox 13 reported.
The police were justified in their brutality because Glover was accused of putting an officer in a headlock.
The video surfaced just days after the fourth anniversary of George Floyd’s police murder that included the same kind of kneeling restraint employed in the alleged Lakeland video.
The footage also followed the Congressional reintroduction of a sweeping criminal justice reform bill named for Floyd.
The George Floyd Justice In Policing Act ambitiously aims to end police brutality, hold police accountable, improve transparency in policing and create meaningful, structural change when it comes to how law enforcement does their jobs.
It was originally introduced in June 2020, less than a month after a Minneapolis police officer used his knee to apply deadly pressure to Floyd’s neck on Memorial Day that year. Floyd’s repeated pleas that he couldn’t breathe were ignored by Derek Chauvin and three other officers who have since been fired and are serving various prison sentences related to the murder.
If the bill advances through the House and Senate and gets signed into law, it would be the first-ever bold, comprehensive law enforcement accountability and transparency legislation.
However, Senate Republicans have repeatedly filibustered the bill into legislative limbo.
This is America.
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