Widely shared footage of a Philadelphia police officer beating a teenager is now the subject of a heavily scrutinized investigation. The video, first shared to social media Monday, shows the officer and a 16-year-old teen separating from a group during a large fight. The officer is seen forcing the young woman to the ground before hitting her repeatedly, though police toldWPVI-TV Tuesday they believe there's more to the story.
"One of the things that did not get captured on the video that the young lady admitted to in her interview is that she actually smacked the officer in the face, knocking her glasses off her face," Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross toldWPVI-TV of the encounter, which happened after authorities responded to a call regarding a person with a weapon. The unidentified teen, Ross says, had previously been directed by the officer to "move back" from the fight before the two ended up breaking away from the group.
"It's not some neat and clean situation when you've got people jumping off of cars and obviously tempers already flaring," Ross said Tuesday. "At that point we arrive. It's not about us, but it's not like the temperature goes down instantly and that's probably what happened. The young lady was probably very angry."
Police say both parties have "told the truth" thus far, a fact Ross noted as a rare occurrence. "There's not a whole lot of discrepancy between the two stories," he said. "It just doesn't happen that often like that." The teen has been charged with assault on police and disorderly conduct. The officer, meanwhile, has been removed from the streets.
In a statement to Complex Tuesday afternoon, a Philadelphia Police Department spokesperson confirmed the department was "actively investigating" the level of force involved in the incident. "Several versions of the incident [were] captured on video by many different individuals out at the scene which provided various vantage points of the incident and placed on many different social media platforms," the department said.
Asa Khalif of Black Lives Matter Pennsylvania, who held an "emergency meeting" Tuesday to discuss the video, claims the unnamed officer "has a reputation" for similar behavior in the past. "I'm not anti-cop, but they make our argument for us when they do shit like this," Khalif toldPhilly Voice Tuesday. "We're talking about an adult with a child, in a hostile environment where (the adult's) job is to de-escalate. Telling her to calm down, to take a breath, that's the type of video I'd have rather seen."
