Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Friday decried a newly surfaced video that exhibits a CPD officer bodyslamming a person to the bottom as “very disturbing.”
In a sequence of tweets, Lightfoot mentioned she expects the investigation into the police use of pressure will probably be “comprehensive and expedited so that the public may gain a complete picture of what happened.”
“While a single video does not depict the entirety of the interactions between the police and the individual, this particular video is very disturbing,” the mayor tweeted.
Shortly earlier than four p.m. on Thursday, Chicago law enforcement officials noticed a 29-year-old man ingesting alcohol at a bus cease within the 700 block of East 79th Street and approached him, in accordance with police.
Police mentioned the person turned “irate” and licked the face of an officer and verbally threatened the officers. When the person spit in an officer’s eye and mouth, the officer carried out an “emergency takedown,” police mentioned.
A 41-second video of the incident that was posted to social media appeared to point out the person dealing with a police SUV with an officer standing behind him when the officer picks him up off his toes and throws him to the bottom. The man seems to lie immobile on the street as different officers collect round him.
Police mentioned costs had been pending Friday in opposition to the 29-year-old.
While a single video doesn’t depict the whole thing of the interactions between the police and the person, this explicit video could be very disturbing.
— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) November 29, 2019
Jovanna Alexiss Jamison, 22, witnessed the incident and recorded the video that was posted to Facebook.
The man “didn’t do anything aggressive, he just stood there,” Jamison mentioned. “He was standing there using his cellphone. They took away his bottle of liquor and threw it.”
The man was taken to University of Chicago Medical Center by police, the place he was stabilized, in accordance with spokesmen for the CPD and the Chicago Fire Department.
The 32-year-old officer who was spit on was taken by ambulance to the identical hospital for analysis, officers mentioned.
The officer’s actions will probably be investigated by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), CPD spokesman Anthony Guglielmi mentioned.
“This incident is under investigation as the actions in the video are concerning,” Guglielmi mentioned in a press release Thursday night time. “If wrongdoing is discovered, officers will be held accountable.”