Videos show Raleigh police officers beating man in the street after he swings at them

Videos posted online Friday show Raleigh police officers restraining a man in the street, with one officer striking him repeatedly on the back with a baton, after the man appears to try to fight them.

One video, posted on Facebook by a witness, has been viewed about 46,000 times and shared 1,800 times.

In another video, obtained by WRAL, a man who is not wearing a shirt is seen swinging his arms and attempting to strike about four officers before they pin him on the ground near the intersection of Garner Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Southeast Raleigh.

The struggle continues once the man is on the ground, with about seven officers restraining him. One officer strikes him at least 10 times with a baton, another kicks him, and another stomps on his hand.

A police spokeswoman said Friday evening that the department was aware of the incident, which happened Friday.

“We are reviewing the matter in accordance with our departmental policies,” spokeswoman Donna-maria Harris said in an email. “In the spirit of transparency, we have proactively made the District Attorney’s office aware of this situation. The Raleigh Police Department offers no further comment on this ongoing investigation.”

The incident has raised the ire of residents and community activists, who held a meeting Friday evening outside The Light House, a nonprofit on Tarboro Street.

“What I saw was one person beaten with nightsticks and kicked by law enforcement officers,” Dawn Blagrove, an attorney with the Carolina Justice Policy Center, said during the meeting.

Earlier Friday, Blagrove said in a statement that the Police Department “has a problem.”

“In less than the span of seven days we have seen the Raleigh Police Department brutally beat yet another black man and fire a weapon indiscriminately in the middle of the day in a neighborhood surrounded by children and the elderly in the black community,” she wrote.

Several people who commented on one of the videos said the man appeared to be resisting the officers, but they also wondered why he was being beaten so excessively.

Blagrove echoed another sentiment among activists and some members of the community: the need for a citizens’ advisory board to monitor police conduct throughout the city.

“There is a lack of trust between the black community and law enforcement because law enforcement displays over and over again their utter lack of respect for the lives of the citizens,” she said.

The man in the video is black. So is Kyron Hinton, who was beaten by law enforcement in Wake County on April 3. Two North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers and a Wake County sheriff’s deputy have been charged with assault in that case, and the troopers were fired. No Raleigh police officers were disciplined or charged, and an investigation concluded that they did not use excessive force.

On Monday afternoon, a Raleigh officer fired two shots at a fleeing sport utility vehicle that had been reported stolen. Witnesses said the officer shouldn’t have discharged his weapon in a crowded neighborhood. A preliminary report released Friday by police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown said the officer believed the driver was going to strike him.

The department notified the Wake County District Attorney’s Office about the Monday shooting, the chief said.

But Blagrove on Friday called on Deck-Brown to do more to address officers’ behavior. Issues aren’t simply resolved when “she tells on the officers and turns them over to the district attorney,” Blagrove said.

Raleigh City Councilman Corey Branch, who represents Southeast Raleigh, said he was “shocked” by the video.

“We have to work on citizens’ and police engagement,” he said. “For any resolution to happen, it can’t be one-sided.”

Diana Powell, founder and director of the nonprofit Justice Served NC, said she was planning a demonstration next month at a City Council meeting.

“I’m telling y’all if y’all don’t stand together and call for a stop to this madness, it’s only going to get worst,” Powell wrote in a comment on the Facebook video Friday.

This story was originally published August 17, 2018 at 5:13 PM.