Today in questionable police behavior that deserves accountability: Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department has launched an investigation over a video posted to Twitter on Monday afternoon. The Aug. 15 video shows a male police officer holding a young woman—possibly a youth—by her arms and pressing her against a police car. In the video, which you can watch below, the young woman is held up off the ground so that her feet are dangling beneath her. The caption on the video says, “So this just happened. I’m TIRED. he literally hopped out and did this immediately to her. No CONVO. Dawg. WTF.”
The location of the incident is not immediately mentioned in the video or on the Twitter timeline, and neither are the names of the officers. There is no identifying information on the young woman who was held dangling in the air.
The video, posted by Twitter user MacAndCheeks, is approximately 45 seconds long and three to four other short videos of the scene are also posted. One video is captioned, “Now they giving her her textbooks back. Ask ME if I have a plastic bag for her.”
According to the Twitter user’s timeline, the video was sent to the D.C. police department for a response. The department acknowledged the video and said it was looking into the matter via the two unidentified officer’s commanders.
As a side note (but not really), the issue of media coverage of incidents of police brutality and murder, particularly when the victims are African-American, deserves some type of discussion. The Washington Post’s coverage of the incident quotes some dude from some Virginia university on the incident:
Tod Burke, a criminal justice professor at Radford University and a former Maryland police officer, said “There’s a lot of things we just don’t know by looking at this.” He said it was not clear what they were talking about.
“It’s just very difficult to tell,” he added.
This Tod fellow didn’t offer much to round out the story. It’s likely the reporter just needed to quote somebody—but here’s the thing: Howard University, a Historically Black University (HBCU) founded in 1867, is mere steps away from 7th and T Streets, which is where the Post says this incident occurred. Nobody was home at Howard’s sociology/African American Studies Department who could have been quoted on this? No incentive to contact Howard’s Law School either, which former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall attended? No? Nothing? Really?
Watch the video below, and see if you can form an opinion more detailed than Tod’s.