Nine California cops gave Americans another reason to despise police officers on Wednesday when they wrestled a sobbing, passive black teenager to the ground after he allegedly jaywalked and refused to follow an officer’s orders.

A video of the incident, which took place in Stockton, Calif., shows a group of officers surrounding the 16-year-old African-American boy and forcing him to the pavement. As the scene unfolds, an unseen female bystander is heard shouting in protest: “That’s a fucking kid! Don’t touch him, leave him alone! That’s a kid. Are you serious? He didn’t do nothing wrong.”

The officer accused the boy of walking through a bus-only lane. A cellphone video uploaded to Facebook and YouTube by Edward Avendano, visible above, has been viewed 10,000 times.

The Guardian reports:

[The video] shows an officer using his baton to push and hold the boy, wearing shorts, on a landscaped perimeter on the sidewalk.

They scuffle, the boy yelling “get the fuck off me” and the officer shouting “stop resisting arrest”. The officer strikes him in the face and orders him to the ground but the boy does not comply. …

YouTube user Edward Avendaño posted the video under the username Stockton Port City. In a Facebook post he said the officer tried to stop the teenager for jaywalking and ordered him to sit but the teen kept walking to his bus.

“The cop kept grabbing his arm & the kid took off the cop’s hand off his arm so the cop took out his baton & that’s when I started recording because everything happened too quick. He didn’t have to hit the kid with the baton & no need to call about 20 cops.”

After holding the teenager, the police eventually released him to his mother pending a charge in juvenile court of resisting arrest and trespassing.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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#california#institutional racism#police brutality#stockton