Graphic video footage posted to social media claims to show heavily armed police officers in Louisiana brutalizing a Black woman and then dragging her nearly naked body across a field.
While confirmed details were immediately scarce, including when, where and why the incident occurred, it is very clear that at least one officer wearing a uniform with a Shreveport Police Department shoulder patch participated in the apparent brutality.
The footage was posted to TikTok on Tuesday by a user named twentyeightgrams28. The first of two videos from the incident showed the unidentified Black woman’s limp body being briefly dragged across a field by two uniformed officers as dozens of bystanders expressed their disapproval at the police response.
They then let her fall to the ground to face the bystanders. One of the officers, who is white, is wielding an assault rifle as he turns toward the crowd.
All the while, messages are flashing across the screen to indicate what is alleged to have happened.
“The woman they’re dragging is unconscious,” one message says at the top of the screen.
“Shreveport police is [sic]dirty asf he beat her unconscious,” another message says.
As the video continues, another message references the crowd to explain, “Everyone around is just freaking out cause [sic]how they was handling her.”
At one point, the white officer is shown abruptly turning toward the crowd and yelling for them to “back up” because, as a message on the screen claimed, “Somebody threw something an [sic]hit him.”
The 28-second clip ends there, but one more video was posted showing what appeared to happen prior to the police dragging the woman.
In a separate 11-second clip, a white officer appears to be raining down punches on the woman while at least one of her hands is behind her back. Another woman is shown on the ground in front of her.
A message is printed on the screen: “See how the police over there pounding on her head?”
Another message says: “This is how the woman got knocked unconscious because of him.”
Viewers were encouraged to identify the officer and “Make him famous.”
Comments under the video suggested the two women were engaged in a fight prior to the police arriving.
This alleged incident isn’t the first time this year that the Shreveport Police Department has drawn attention over accusations of police brutality.
Back in February, a Shreveport police officer was charged with murder for the shooting death of 43-year-old Alonzo Bagley, an unarmed Black man.
Officer Alexander Tyler was arrested on a charge of negligent homicide. Tyler’s own bodycam footage proves Bagley’s hands were up when he was shot.
Bagley was killed Feb. 3 after officers responded to a neighbor complaining the music was too loud in Bagley’s apartment.
And in 2020, just days after George Floyd was murdered by ex-cop Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, a Shreveport police officer defended the lethal knee restraint employed in the shocking death.
Sgt. Brent Mason wrote on Facebook in a since-deleted post that the deadly technique Chauvin used was “a common mistake” officers employ that he said should not constitute “an act of murder.”
After writing about what he says is the correct way to kneel on a suspect in an effort to restrain them, Mason resorted to a racist stereotype and suggested without proof that Floyd suffered from health problems and was probably intoxicated when Chauvin and three other officers encountered him on May 25, 2020. Finally, Mason said that Chauvin should be presumed “innocent” despite the death being recorded by witnesses who implored the cop to stop kneeling on Floyd, who repeated helplessly that he couldn’t breathe.
In that instance, Mason was placed on leave but “still reporting to work.”
This is America.
– Written by NewsOne Staff
