This video, posted to Facebook on July 1, has gotten over a million views due to the stunning aggression shown by the plainclothes detective enacting the arrest. Two men were walking down Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem when they were stopped. It’s unclear if the police told them why they were being stopped, or if the police thought the man being arrested had a penknife, or why the cop puts the man’s ID in his pocket instead of running his info to see if he has any outstanding warrants and finding some reason to justify the stop, but it is clear that the detective escalates the physical altercation each step of the way. First he grabs the man, and when the man tries to leave, the detective punches him in the face. It turns into a bareknuckle boxing match. Eventually the scene gets swarmed with cops, and the man is taken into custody in an ambulance, because he was spitting out blood from getting slugged in the face.
