In a disturbing video made public this week, New York City police officers are shown physically restraining a man by placing him in a head-to-toe enclosed body bag.
The video, uploaded to YouTube on Thursday, shows an African-American man with his hands, feet and legs bound, lying facedown on the ground near a subway station in downtown Manhattan.
The nearly four-minute clip shows at least 10 uniformed and undercover officers hovering over or confining the man and enclosing him in a blue-and-white police bag and then carrying him several feet, like a duffel bag, when they are finished.
The person who took the footage, whose voice can be heard on the video, sounds amazed at such callous treatment of a human being and uses quite a bit of profanity, calling it “the craziest s—t I've ever seen done to somebody in my whole f—king life.”
He adds: “There’s a man in that bag like an animal!”
Eventually police shut down the videotaper by yelling for him to “clear the area.”
The New York Daily News reports that a New York City Police Department spokesman said that police use this type of device “when an [emotionally disturbed person] is violent and may cause harm to themselves or others.” The sack has vents and reportedly allows for breathing.
At this point, there are no reports of what occurred before the man was bound on the ground.
Watch below:
 
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to an NYPD restraint as hog-tying. The practice, which is banned by the department, did not occur in the video.