A California resident was tossed to the ground by a police officer and then struck in the face multiple times by the officer ... apparently for jaywalking.
According to the Associated Press, authorities say the Sacramento officer was trying to stop the man he saw illegally crossing a street Monday afternoon. The officer got out of his patrol car and attempted to detain the man, but the man just walked away.
The two men began to argue, and that was when, according to police, the pedestrian apparently challenged the officer to a fight.
At no point in the brief video of the incident did the man appear to raise his hands at the officer. However, the officer is seen charging the man before tossing him to the ground.
“The officer threw the pedestrian to the ground and began striking him in the face with his hand multiple times,” authorities acknowledged.
The department said that the officer’s actions appear to show unacceptable conduct, according to the newswire.
Witness Naomi Montaie recorded the brief clip that is making rounds and posted it on Facebook, shaken up by what she witnessed.
“I never witnessed anything like that. He just kept hitting him, and kept hitting him, and I was like, ‘Oh my God ... why you hitting him like that? Why you hitting him like that? You need to stop hitting him.’ And he kept hitting him,” she said, Fox40 reports.
Montaie identified the man the officer hit as Nandi Cain Jr., someone from her apartment complex.
“Any human being don’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that,” she said.
Cain’s girlfriend, Antoinette Stewart, said that she could imagine him cutting across the street on his long walk home from his job, but said she still doesn’t understand how the incident could have escalated the way it did.
“I just want some answers. What happened?”she said.
Read more at the New York Post and Fox40.