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.
16 Comments
MordhausGrabbing the baton I am beating you with is a crime!
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lucky760Good to shed some light on kids intentionally being disobedient even with a reasonable officer (relatively speaking).
The first officer showed a great deal of restraint and probably was even bowing to the pressure from all the cameras and onlookers and woman yelling "It's a kid!" because he actually backed off and just tried again and again asking the kid to get on the ground.
He clearly, purposefully resisted (probably feeling goaded on by the crowd) and was rightfully taken to the ground.
Drachen_Jagersays...Is revolution the only way to deal with this? Cops get ever more out of hand and politicians seem completely impotent (to deal with Cop violence, they seem fine when it's their dicks leading them into trouble).
Cops always whine about their safety, without ever thinking for a second that turning the public against themselves by these brutal tactics is going to result in a far more dangerous work environment for them and their colleagues.
PaybackYou people don't know the whole story. There's probably extenuating circumstances. Like... what if he had stepped on a sidewalk stress relief line? I'm pretty sure his mom wouldn't appreciate the fractured vertebrae that would have caused. Just THINK before posting!
newtboyAnyone who's read my comments knows I'm not a big fan of the police these days, but they were totally in the right here, and the description is absolutely ridiculous BS IMO.
People who try to make a police misconduct case out of this should think first and realize that offering this as evidence of police misconduct/abuse minimizes ACTUAL misconduct/abuse. There was NO "brutal beating", no choking seen, no stomping, no 'swarming by 9 officers', no 'slamming to the concrete', no 'arrested for jaywalking', just a teenager acting a fool and ignoring commands, pushing and kicking officers, and grabbing their weapons, all of which didn't end well for him when he's arrested for resisting arrest and refusing to comply with a direct lawful order from a peace officer...he'll be incredibly lucky if another charge for assault on a police officer isn't coming.
I wonder, what alternative actions do those complaining about this think the police SHOULD have taken? Just let him walk away indignantly? The law simply doesn't work that way.
Jaywalking may not be an arrest-able offence, but refusing/ignoring an officer's lawful command to stop certainly is, so is resisting when the cop tries to control/arrest you (like pulling the cop's hand off your arm, pushing the cop, or grabbing the baton that has yet to hit you).
The kid only gets hit with the baton (in the video) when he grabs it with both hands and tries to wrestle it away from the cop, as the cop wrestles for control of the weapon, the kid gets grazed in the face. When the other 4 (not 9) officers take control, he continues to fight with them and is taken to the ground.
As to his being a kid, he certainly thought he was adult enough to ignore/fight with the police. As far as I could tell, they all used restraint (compared to the normal dog pile and face kicks we've seen in the past in this kind of situation). I really don't think this video is going to help that 'kid' in court.
I'm somewhat surprised they didn't go after the woman screaming for interfering with a police action, or at least command her to move away. Telling the kid to stay seated (and ignore the command to get on the ground) sure seems to meet the criteria in my eyes.
TrancecoachThis is what fascism looks like.
Anyone who's read my comments knows I'm not a big fan of the police these days, but they were totally in the right here, and the description is ridiculous IMO.
People who try to make a police misconduct case out of this should think first and realize that offering this as evidence of police misconduct/abuse minimizes ACTUAL misconduct/abuse. There was NO "brutal beating", no choking seen, no stomping, just a teenager acting a fool and ignoring commands, pushing officers, and grabbing their weapons, all of which didn't end well for him.
I wonder, what alternative actions do those complaining about this think the police SHOULD have taken? Just let him walk away indignantly? The law doesn't work that way.
Jaywalking may not be an arrest-able offence, but refusing/ignoring an officer's lawful command to stop certainly is, so is resisting when the cop tries to control/arrest you (like pulling the cop's hand off your arm, pushing the cop, or grabbing the baton that has yet to hit you).
The kid only gets hit with the baton (in the video) when he grabs it with both hands and tries to wrestle it away from the cop, as the cop wrestles for control of the weapon, the kid gets grazed in the face. When the other 4 officers take control, he continues to fight with them.
As to his being a kid, he certainly thought he was adult enough to ignore/fight with the police. As far as I could tell, they all used restraint (compared to the normal dog pile and face kicks we've seen in the past in this kind of situation). I really don't think this video is going to help that 'kid' in court.
I'm somewhat surprised they didn't go after the woman screaming for interfering with a police action, or at least command her to move away. Telling the kid to stay seated (and ignore the command to get on the ground) sure seems to meet the criteria in my eyes.
ulysses1904I've had it, after using it for 22 years the internet has become so freakin stale. Same old lazy know-it-all spectators who couldn't walk a mile in their own shoes, much less anybody else's. The predictable drama queen cliches about revolution and fascism and cop trolling and "he's just a kid" and race baiting and "I'm the face of the oppressed" and all the fake controversy and forced celebrities and all the shit-eating selfies. This clumsy new interface on Videosift made me realize it takes more mouse clicks just to read the same old crap. It's been fun.
ChaosEngineAnd that is what hyperbole looks like.
We have no evidence as to exactly what happened here. When the video starts we see a police officer attempting to arrest the "kid" who is clearly resisting arrest.
Here's the thing, even if you are 100% in the right, you are not allowed to physically resist arrest. It's a crime. Even if the arrest was wrong, if you resist, you are automatically guilty of a separate crime.
That's not fascism, that's common sense.
This is what fascism looks like.
PaybackI agree it's illegal, I don't agree it's common sense.
Even if the arrest was wrong, if you resist, you are automatically guilty of a separate crime.
That's not fascism, that's common sense.
ChaosEngineCommon sense is probably the wrong phrase.
But how else does the system work? If you are going to invest a group with the responsibility to enforce laws (by violence if necessary), then almost by definition, any kind of active* resistance against them has to be a crime.
Otherwise, what? You're a ninja/the hulk/Ronda Rousey and if you can fight off the cops, you go free?
*passive resistance, as at a demonstration, is a different scenario.
I agree it's illegal, I don't agree it's common sense.
SagemindThe woman doing all the yelling is escalating the situation. She is the one who is taking a simple situation and turning it into an incident.
I know we don't know what happened before the camera is filming. But what we do see is a teen, resisting and fighting back against an otherwise calm officer, (Who by the way, did a great job controlling his adrenalin.)
The first time you watch this, you feel for the kid who the woman yelling, is convincing us that something horrible is happening. But if you watch it again, and shut her out, it's clear the officers did nothing other than to quickly handle the situation.
One of the bystanders should have stood up and handled that woman before she actually caused the teen some harm.
lucky760"Well, he wouldn't get on the ground like I asked, Sergeant, so I had to let him go. What else could I have possibly done?"
teehee
what alternative actions do those complaining about this think the police SHOULD have taken?
Esoogsays...No, he did not get arrested for jaywalking. No, he wasn't slammed to the ground for no reason at all. That description couldn't be more slanted, and is complete BULLSHIT.
The 16 year old didn't comply when asked to do something. He cussed at the cop and told him “Fuck You, I’m not stopping for you,” and continued to struggle and fight.
If he had done what he was supposed to (not walk in the bus lane, and not argue and fight with the cops) then he wouldn't be in that situation.
He's an insubordinate asshole, and that woman needs to STFU and let them do their job. Enough of the slanted bleeding heart bullshit.
rancorsays..."Common sense" is actually defined as "ignoring jaywalking". Look it up.
C-noteTo punish and oppress is the american apartheid way. There are no black children in the eyes of police. An excuse to fear for their lives is created when the use of excessive force causes the victim to try to protect themselves from the beating which justifies the use of deadly when the victim tries to stop the beating by grabbing the cops weapon. Avoid any interaction with the police and run for your life to get away if you feel they have targeted you.
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