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By BWSTimes Staff
Lawton, Okla. — The Lawton Police Department is investigating itself after two of its white police officers were caught brutalizing a young black man.
In the video, the alleged criminal’s face — a man who simultaneously became a victim of police brutality — could visibly be seen with his face shoved into the concrete by one of the officers. The officer’s full weight was on the man’s back, therefore, restricting the man’s ability to breath. The other police officer could be seen forcefully punching the man on the side of the rib cage while yelling obscenities.
In the video, below, you could clearly hear the force of each individual strike from the police officer.
Witness Luis Landeros Jr. told local reporters that, “He was on his knees, and they told him if he didn’t get all the way on the ground — one officer was like — I’m going to knock you the f**k out. He was on his knees. He listened to everything he was saying — all the commands. And he got on his knees. And when they jumped on top of him, and the officer started choking him, that’s when he started like trying to resist like trying to get him to like stop choking him and stuff, and the other one came and started punching him.”
Mr. Landeros’s brother, Marcos Torres, shot the video on his cellphone
As Mr. Torres tried getting a better angle of the incident, one of the police officers can be heard angrily yelling “Get the f**k back!”
“I was already heading home, and then I seen the altercation with the other dude and his front neighbor, and I watched the cops pull up. Around that time, I was just going to head home, and then I said I’m just going to chill here and see what happens and that’s when I started recording,” Mr. Torres told the local reporters.
Neighbors vocalized their disapproval with what they thought was unwarranted behavior.
Mr. Torres told reporters that after the man was arrested, one of the officers seen that he was recording, and demanded that Mr. Torres give him the cell phone. When Mr. Torres began moving his camera to his pocket, the officer quickly snatched it out of Mr. Torres’s hand.
Sergeant Jenkins said, “We have to take that [and] look into it, [and] make sure that there’s nothing on there that we can use as far as the investigation is concerned, whether it be into the incident or the officers’ investigation.” Sergeant Jenkins added, “Right now, we are looking into the incident, and we will investigate further. When we have more information, we will definitely keep the public updated and let them know, but we are aware there’s a video out there, and we are aware of the incident that did occur. Our job on our end is to do due diligence and look into the matter and make sure our officers did nothing that was out of policy, or out of the way to get the male into custody.”
The man who became the victim of police brutality by the Lawton Police Department was taken to the hospital afterward, and then he was taken to jail.