Not “at their best,” eh? That’s what Mesa, Arizona, Police Chief Ramon Batista said about a sergeant and three officers when he spoke at a press conference this week, where the department released the video below. Taken from a surveillance camera at an apartment complex on May 23, the video shows four Mesa police officers punching and kicking the crap out of an unarmed man, who appears to be guilty of the crime of talking on your cell phone while black.
Chief Batista said the man, identified as 33-year-old Robert Johnson, was not being cooperative, although it appears Johnson cooperates with every command. Apparently he didn’t put down his phone fast enough. According to Buzzfeed,
As the video shows, Johnson complied and, still looking at his cellphone, leaned against the wall next to the elevator. Immediately, four officers swarmed around him, grabbed his body, knee him in the gut, and started to shove and punch him in the head and face, knocking him to the floor. They then dragged and handcuffed him. Later on, an officer takes his head and slams it into the elevator door.
The four cops doing the pummeling have been placed on administrative leave while the department investigates. Chief Batista knew the video would come out, so he attempted to head off controversy by releasing it, but he told the Arizona Republic, “Just for the casual observer this isn’t going to look right.”
Heck, for any observer, casual or otherwise, it doesn’t “look right.”
Johnson, who lives in the building, is undergoing treatment for the “major injuries” he sustained during the attack. Meanwhile, the city’s police union says it is unfair to release the video out of context.
Want some further Mesa PD “context”? How ‘bout that time in 2016 when the Mesa police shot and killed Daniel Shaver in a motel hallway, shooting him five times with an AR-15, as he begged them, on his knees with hands in the air: “Please don’t shoot!”
Not at their best either.