Via: Last Tuesday, a cellphone video recording the brutal beating and arrest of a 16-year-old African American kid went viral on social media. It showed some five Stockton, California police officers swarming Emilio Mayfield for jaywalking.

California police in Stockton saw a teenager boy crossing the street, but they noticed he wasn’t using the crosswalk. To teach him a lesson in traffic safety, nine officers swarmed him, beat him, slammed him down on the concrete and finally arrested him for jaywalking… There’s only one problem: jaywalking isn’t an arrestable offense.

In fact, the Stockton police have just admitted to us that jaywalking isn’t even a minor misdemeanor at all. Jaywalking is simply what is called an “infraction,” punishable only by a fine of under $200.

We asked the Stockton police to explain why officers then arrested the teen for something that is not even a misdemeanor or arrestable offense. That’s when our conversation ended. The police had no comment.

Eye-witnesses of the brutal arrest said that a Stockton police officer told the teenager to sit down, but had not explained why. The officer never told the teen he was being detained or arrested, so the teen continued walking towards the bus he was trying to catch.

Edgar Avendaño, the witness who recorded the video, said the officer grabbed the teen by the arm. The teen “took off the cop’s hand off his arm” with his own hand, much the same as anyone would when being grabbed randomly. The teen was at no time violent with the officer.

The police defend this violent grabbing, citing “safety reasons.”

Officer Joseph Silva said “the officer told the young man to get on the sidewalk. After the teenager refused to comply and used obscene language, the officer went over and a there was a scuffle.”

Avendaño’s video records just how violent and aggressive the officer was being from start to finish. In the video, the officer can clearly be seen pinning the teen’s ankles against his body where he is seated on a brick landscaping wall.

Bystanders can be heard yelling, “It’s a f**cking kid! Get off him, he’s been jaywalking. Leave him alone, he didn’t do anything wrong.”

In spite of the officer being brutally violent with the teen, he keeps yelling to him to “stop resisting.” It appears that the only “resisting” in the video, is the kid trying not to get smashed in the face with a baton – something which eventually happens.

“Get the f*ck off of him, it’s a f*cking kid,” another bystander screams.

As the teen holds his injured jaw that the officer just smashed with a baton, eight additional officers swarm the youth and slam him to the concrete.

Some of the officers can be seen deliberately trying to block Avendaño’s camera angle.

“That’s a f*cking kid, he didn’t do nothing wrong,” one of the witnesses says. “Call his f*cking mama.”

Stockton police told us that the situation is “under review.”

Now, Mayfield is speaking out. He told CBS Sacramento that he was simply trying to catch the bus to go to school when an officer yelled at him for walking in a bus lane.

The police report obtained by the Washington Post claims that Emilio said to the officer, “F–k you, I’m not stopping for you.”

This would still not give the officer the right to brutally attack the youth, but the statement sounds dubious, to say the least.

“The officer grabbed the suspect’s arm, but he pulled away and took a fighting stance,” the police report added. “The officer used his [baton] to push the suspect to the ground and hold him there while waiting for backup.”

Emilio said in his interview with CBS Sacramento that feels “traumatized” since the incident.

“His baton is toward my chest, then goes to my neck, and he was choking me,” the teen added to ABC 10. “I can hardly breathe, and I’m pushing it back.”

According to ABC 10, Emilio wasn’t seriously hurt. He was taken to the police station and cited for trespassing in a bus lane and resisting arrest before being released to his mother.

Police spokesman Joseph Silva said that when the boy tried to grab the baton that the officer was beating him with, that constituted a “serious crime.”

“As police officers, we cannot and will not let anyone grab onto or try to take away any of our weapons, not only for our safety but, for the safety of the general public,” he said.

If Emilio is tried and convicted as an adult, he will face a year in jail.

“I see myself as a great young man, successful in school,” he said, nevertheless.