A cellphone video capturing a Caucasian Baltimore police officer punching an unarmed Black male teenager in the face in an unprovoked attack contradicts the cop’s claims that he was assaulted. He is being investigated after the footage disproves his version of the event.
“The video shows the proof. I didn’t try to attack the officer,” 19-year-old Antonio Moore told WJZ-13 CBS Baltimore.
The footage, captured by an onlooker without the cop’s knowledge, shows the officer forcing a group of teenagers to move from in front of a McDonald’s on Howard Street. The situation quickly escalates when the cop aggressively addresses the innocent young man and “poked” him in the chest in an attempt to flex his “authority.”
Refusing to be disrespected, Moore said, “Don’t touch me!” then swatted the cop’s hand from his chest, which prompted the cop to punch him in the face, tackle him to the ground, then handcuff and arrest him, charging Moore with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct.
“He punched me for no reason,” Moore explained.
In the arrest report, the cop wrote that Moore “without warning began rapidly advancing towards me in a threatening, hostile manner, so I placed my arm out to create a distance and halted his advance.”
However, the video shows otherwise, proving the cop was lying.
According to WJZ, city police were unaware of the video until WJZ broadcast it. While police would not speak on camera, they claimed to be investigating and explained that the video only shows a portion of what happened.
Thanks to modern technology, countless citizens are capturing evidence of some inept and corrupt cops who are criminalizing and victimizing a generation of urban youths as they disguise police brutality and often end up hitting innocent people with ambiguous charges while shielding the very same cops who assaulted them. That is why recording police encounters is being encouraged by many cop-watch activists. Without the video footage of this police confrontation, a jury would have most assuredly convicted Moore of the charges he faces for being assaulted by a cop. Watch the video online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw4uZcD_qAU#t=14.